#at some point i have to oet go of the past and start making the future what i want it to be

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

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[arlothia]

Bulgasal Fix-It Brainstorming

❗Attention everyone who watched the kdrama ‘Bulgasal’! Did you come out of it feeling like it could have been better? Especially the whole backstory from 1000 years ago? Then you may be entitled to brainstorming compensation!❗

So the other night, @smylealong and I had a fabulous time brainstorming how that whole deal between the characters 1000 years ago could have been more engaging and made more sense.

But before we start, let’s see what we’re working with:

Lady Bulgasal (LB) encounters the kids, her maternal instincts kick in, and she abandons Hwal for a time to be with them as they grow up.

Ok Eul Tae (OET) was the sickly/insane son of the ruler of the area, killed his brother, tried to kill the kids who witnessed it, saw LB, and then some time later during that attack, got OG (original) Hwal (whom he’d never met before) out of there and was like “Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my soul, so Bulgasal me maybe!”

It’s just so…..lackluster. Both Lea and I were hoping for so much more as we watched the drama. Not to mention we were expecting there to be more between OET and Do Yun in the past since OET was SO very attached to him in modern day.

So we made it better!

I’m putting this under a cut because it got a little long :P

First off, we’re not going to have LB meet the kids when they’re that little. Let’s make them the actual grandkids of the Shaman Lady and she raises them.

One day, the sister, Min Si Ho (MSH) (who’s still young, not quite as old as we see her in modern day) is in the woods and is attacked by a random monster. In comes LB who attacks and kills the monster. MSH then runs up and hugs her savior. This is TOTALLY not what LB was expecting from her next snack and thus a bond is made.

BUT!! Because any sort of relationship between a monster (let alone a Bulgasal) and a human is completely taboo, she keeps it from OG Hwal. She keeps an eye on the kids (she meets Do Yun through MSH) and maybe keeps it a secret by saying she’s going on “hunting trips” or whatever…

Now skipping over to OET, his brother (the favorite son) is a COMPLETE bully to him and even goes so far as to beat him up sometimes. After one such incident, OET is left alone in the wilderness and Do Yun finds him, brings him back home, and nurses him back to health.

While under his care, OET sees LB and sees her fast healing powers (she gets cut or something and it heals in a matter of seconds). He doesn’t necessarily know that she’s a Bulgasal, but he knows she’s some kind of monster and the wheels start turning and the plot to murder his brother in revenge is kicked into gear.

See, OET is the kind of guy who doesn’t like sharing, and seeing how this powerful being is friends with his newfound friend (the only person who’s ever been nice to him in the history of his life), he doesn’t want to share him and figures Do Yun will dump his sickly butt at some point because who needs him when you have a powerful monster lady?

A short time later, OET is in the forest planning how he’s going to frame LB for the murder of his brother after he kills him on a hunt that’s coming up. When wouldn’t you know it! A random monster comes out and attacks him! Now it’s OG Hwal’s turn to come in and attack the monster.

A powerful backhand sends the monster flying back against a tree, dropping close to where OET is cowering in fear and not a little bit of awe. OET scrambles to grab his knife and plunge it into the monster who’s not quite dead yet and kills it himself.

OET then looks up at OG Hwal with a certain amount of glee in his eyes at the kill and admiration for this powerful being in front of him. OET becomes Fanboy #1 and OG Hwal is taken aback by this. He’s never been met with anything but fear and horror before; never anything positive. So it kinda feels…nice to be revered and worshiped instead of feared and hunted.

So OG Hwal takes OET under his wing in a sense, though not quite as close as LB and the kiddos. And, once again, because it’s taboo for monsters and humans to have a relationship, he keeps it hush-hush from LB. So both Bulgasal have secret humans they’re keeping from the other. They can be kind of foils for each other in this sense.

Now, being the bloodthirsty duo from hell, OET is like “hey, I want to kill my brother and frame this other monster for it!” to which OG Hwal is like “That’s my boy!”

However, OET doesn’t know LB is a Bulgasal but knows that OG Hwal is. OET may be insane, but knowingly making plans with a Bulgasal to kill another Bulgasal is just…not smart.

But then one day, maybe the day of the hunt, everything starts crashing down because of the girl’s power to see peoples’ pasts. OET comes to say goodbye for a bit as he’s going off on the hunt and the girl winds up touching his hand and sees him with OG Hwal (whom she recognizes as a Bulgasal), sees that OET is planning on murdering his brother, and that he’s planning on framing LB.

Let’s say that she doesn’t put all this together at first, so OET has time to leave and get to the hunt. But soon after, she tells LB what she saw and as far as they know, OG Hwal knows OET is planning on framing her. She figures OG Hwal found out about her precious humans, feels betrayed, and IT. IS. ON!!

Cue an epic confrontation.

LB (assuming he already knows), lets spill about her humans and now it’s OG Hwal’s turn to feel betrayed because she’s been spending so much time with them instead of him. She’s choosing the “peaceful life” and is walking away from her identity as a Bulgasal.

So they each try to kill the others’ humans, and the hunting party led by OET’s dad shows up to add to the mayhem.

OG Hwal kills the siblings, lays the curse that he does in the canon (and everyone else is pretty much toast at this point, too), gets seriously injured, and OET is able to get him away while LB is injured/mourning the loss of her kiddos. And then the transferring of Bulgasal-ness happens.

Skip forward 400 years:

So Hwal is now born a human and his wife and son are the reincarnations of the humans that he hated in his past life (gotta love the irony!).

During that hunt, OET goes after the wife and son because those two were the reason everything went bad all those years before. Now, the son is the reincarnation of his former friend, but OET is a bag full of crazy and hatred at the moment and doesn’t initially recognize the kid as his former friend. This can lead to remorse/guilt/etc. later when he encounters him again in the current timeline.

But anyway, OET kills them. And let’s say that OET has done lots of research on Bulgasals in the past centuries so he’s learned about the whole transfer of Bulgasal-ness and stuff like that. So we can even fit in the logic of “if I kill your wife and son and make you think LB did it then you’ll kill her and take her Bulgasal-ness!” Because even after ALL this time he still wants to frame her AND get rid of those pesky humans AND get Hwal back to being a Bulgasal. So this is a win/win/win situation for him right now!

But there’s a snag: Hwal doesn’t have OG Hwal’s memories and he also doesn’t have the bloodthirst that connected them before. Because it’s LB’s Bulgasal-ness in Hwal now. And, you know, having just killed his loved ones, OET figures that right now isn’t the best time to be like “hey buddy!” as Hwal would INSTANTLY hate him.

So instead, OET keeps sending reincarnated monsters Hwal’s way for the next 600 years to try and kickstart that bloodthirst that they bonded over all those years. But alas for him, it just doesn’t work…

Now for some general housekeeping:

and at this point we can’t remember what the drama actually said about the following points or what was just inferred, so we’re just going to put it here even if we’re reiterating what the drama already said…

-Why did Sang Un get into a trance when monsters attacked?

I always figured it was latent bloodthirstiness. She’s still got some sort of Bulgasal-ness in her (a whisper of a vestige of a memory of it) and it took over when she was attacked. Maybe something similar happened to Hwal 600 years ago when he was fighting monsters 🤷‍♀️

-That Black Hole!

OET has that black hole in his chest because he’s a human born with a soul that has now been ripped away and replaced with Bulgasal-ness. That hole is where his soul should be - as a former human, his body still has the memory/space/whatever for one. And after one more round of musical chairs, that soul is in Sang Un, so every time she’s seriously injured, he feels it. And we would make this more consistent because it very much was NOT in the drama!!

The reason Hwal doesn’t have the black hole when his soul was taken is because he is the OG Bulgasal. So essentially, the soul never really belonged to the body it was in. Thus, ripping it apart wouldn’t cause a black hole.

-Sang “Can’t Touch This” Un and OET

The reason OET can’t attack Sang Un without his black hole hurting like an S of a B, is because Sang Un’s twin sister put a freaking curse on OET as she was dying. I mean, remember when OG Hwal was cursing everyone (“you’re going to lose your arm, you’re going to be blind, blah blah blah”) and that all happened in their next lives, so curses are a thing y’all!!

But not only that, because they were born as twins, the whisper of Bulgasal-ness was split between them. So when one half of it was killed, the other half bore a powerful grudge. And a Bulgasal’s grudge, no matter how weak the power is, is a powerful thing. So Bulgasal’s grudge + Bulgasal’s curse = you are screwed my friend!! Not only can OET not touch her without getting hurt, but ANY time she gets hurt he feels it, so he can’t just send a goon off to do it for him.

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So there we have it, our very own fix-it brainstorming session put in a more legible format :P

Sound off on your thoughts on this or any other ideas you have to fix the aspects of the drama that were less than stellar.