#love for love's sake rewatch

[hotasfahrenheit]

big same, buddy, big same

[lutheban]

Hey remember right before the pandemic when a season of a show was about 15-20 episodes? Remember when having 8 episodes what called "a mini-series"? Remember when we could get a season a year and not wait 2 years to get a continuation of a story? remember when shows had time to grow and form an audience? remember that? yeah? cuz i do

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Symptoms of a System Error: The Manifestation of Myungha's Depression in Love for Love's Sake

Ok I will almost certainly have more thoughts about this when I go back to rewatch Love for Love’s Sake in the next couple weeks, but I’ve been thinking about the finale for the last couple of hours and I want to get some stuff out of my head. Before I get too far in to this, I want to say that I think most of the ambiguity in the show is brilliantly executed in a way that allows people to take whatever meaning they want to from it without contradicting each other, without stepping on toes, and without having to twist or bend the narrative beyond all recognition to  make it make sense. 

So I want to talk about the use of depression in this show, because the way Myungha exists in the world is recognizable enough to me that these moments of choice, and the system errors were extremely legible. That doesn’t mean my take is the correct one (and I honestly don’t think there is one right answer here anyway) but it’s what I got out of it, so with the needless ramble complete, let’s get to it. 

Prologue

gif by @dramascene

I connected rather quickly to Myungha as a character from right near the beginning of episode 1 because of how passionate he was about the character of Yeowoon and how much he hoped for a happy ending for that character. As someone who processes a lot of my feelings, and who understands myself better through media consumption, I was quick to appreciate the fact that Myungha recognizes the parts of himself that speak to Yeowoon and to know that because Yeowoon is fictional, he has a chance not to suffer with merely a stroke of a pen. The Author could have chosen from the beginning to give Yeowoon a happy ending, and did not because he believes that there are people for whom bad things will never stop happening. But from the perspective of a fictional story, the Author should consider who he is writing the story for. Myungha connects to Yeowoon, and it sends one hell of a tragic message for how Myungha’s life will end up if even in fiction the people who suffer have no hope of happiness. 

Myungha tells the Author that someone like Cha Yeowoon, someone like him [Myungha] with awful lives can still be happy. Looking back on that statement with the knowledge that Myungha kills himself, sends a very clear message, at least for me, of the hope that he was clinging to and finally lost his grip on. The Author asks if Myungha can change the outcome, and thus begins our story.

Debuffs

Now, I don’t know that I will have much more to say here than what @jemmo said in their very brilliant post, beyond the fact I agree with their interpretation of the debuffs. But I am thinking about the debuffs as it relates to mental health and to Myungha’s independence. One of Myungha’s first missions is to befriend Cha Yeowoon, and we see the difficulties associated with doing so when it comes to the Fondness Level meter and the debuffs that happen as a result. I love what Jess said about the dichotomy there: the debuffs mean that every time Myungha gets close to Yeowoon, something bad happens, Myungha uses that as a reason to stay away from Yeowoon to protect him when in fact, being around Myungha and increasing his fondness for him is the only way to really keep Yeowoon safe. 

gif by @dramascene

And here again there is something recognizable to me in this dichotomy. Myungha likes Yeowoon, Myungha wants to be friends with Yeowoon, every time something bad might happen to Yeowoon, Myungha is there to intervene. But Myungha is convinced that the potentially negative events that might occur during a debuff are because of him, and so he avoids Yeowoon as much as he possibly can. To me this makes the debuffs a stand in for depression symptoms. Myungha has convinced himself that he is the cause of the bad moments in Yeowoon’s day. Myungha has convinced himself that Yeowoon would be better off if they weren’t friends, because he only makes things worse. And that is not something he can easily shake off, it’s not something he can logic his way out of, that’s the game, that’s just how it is. And so he withdraws until Yeowoon comes to him. 

And honestly thinking about it, nothing bad really happens during those debuffs. The light doesn’t shatter, the boys back off on the bus, Yeowoon doesn’t punch Sangwon. Maybe the reason why nothing at all happens is because Myungha intervenes. Maybe if Myungha hadn’t been there, the light would have broken, maybe if Myungha hadn’t been there Yeowoon would have punched Sangwon. But that is not a lens that Myungha is capable of viewing himself through, that is never an option that crosses Myungha’s mind because he is too focused on feeling like the cause of Yeowoon’s problems. 

System Errors

I know there is a lot of confusion or at least uncertainty around the system errors. Why are they happening? Where are they coming from? For me, I think the answer is Myungha himself. The first time we get a system error, it’s in Episode 6, what I think is the day after Yeowoon and Myungha have their first kiss and very soon after Yeowoon and Myungha kiss on the rooftop at school. The first error isn’t subtle, but it’s not explicitly stated. Myungha walks in to a room to take a phone call and walks in to the middle of band practice, falling through the world as he tries to remove himself from the situation until he (literally) runs in to Yeowoon. Myungha goes home that night and gets his first moments in the black abyss, and the first explicit mention via pop-up of a system error. I have not gone through (yet) to track every instance of what happens before a system error pop-up occurs from that point on, but I will say moment that was most legible for me in terms of indicating that these system errors were stemming from Myungha himself were when he gets the notification both times that Yeowoon looks directly at him and tells Myungha “I love you.” 

gif by @dragonsareawesome123

That moment was a guy punch for me because I was not able to see it any other way except that Myungha is so incapable of believing that people could actually love him that someone telling him directly and sincerely that they love him cannot exist in his world. He literally cannot compute it, and thus an error occurs. Again from the perspective of depression, or trauma, or what have you, this is familiar to me. It is perhaps the most reflective part of Myungha to my own psyche. Neither of us know how to be loved. 

Myungha is called out on this repeatedly, he is nice to everyone, he does so much for everyone and refuses to ask for help himself. I’m the same way, I will bend over backwards as much as I can to help the people that I care about, but it is a rare occasion where I can ask for help myself. I’m not sure if this is the case for Myungha, but for me at least a lot of that stems from needing to make myself useful to people in some way so they keep me around. And so I end up feeling like a commodity to the people that I care about and help, and merely tolerated by anyone else that I do not help but that interacts with me any way. Myungha is called out consistently by multiple people, real or NPC about this similar habit. Myungha does not want to be a burden, Myungha only cares about other people’s happiness, Myungha is not happy himself and has maybe never been happy and so he pours everything he can in to lightening the load for others. 

He loves Yeowoon, but to be loved by Yeowoon is different. To experience any moments of joy cannot possibly be real. Maybe I am projecting too much on to the character, but it makes complete and total sense to me that Myungha’s worldview would break down upon having someone state wholeheartedly that they want to be a support system for him. 

Cruel Choices

gif by @dramascene

With the enmeshment of depression and video game mechanics in mind, I want to talk about the scene at the end of Episode 6. I love this scene so much for a number of reasons: 

It turns the game on a head for me as we slip further and further in to a nightmare scenario

It raises the stakes and attempts to get Myungha to make a hard choice 

It forces Myungha to think about what is important to him 

It’s ultimate purpose and who is posting the mission is ambiguous/uncertain 

I’m going to focus on number four. I think it is a perfectly valid read to see this and all video game mechanics as designed by The Author in an effort to help Myungha change Yeowoon’s story in which case this mission feels particularly vindictive and cruel. @lurkingshan posed the question in a conversation we were having about Love for Love’s Sake, where she wondered why the game could not hold two sources of love for Myungha at once. I love that question because it made me realize how differently this show can be read and how important who you choose to read as the entity in control of this game is for what this scene specifically means and I love so many interpretations of it, I love the interpretation that is was simply cruel, I love the interpretation that in retrospect this was the Author being angry at Myungha for dying, I love the reflection from @jemmo that said this felt like a choice between staying rooted in the past (sparing grandma) or choosing a future (sparing Yeowoon)

For me, I think I am leaning heavily in to the pop ups are under Myungha’s subconscious control, his mind, the missions he thinks are important, the problems he thinks he is causing are what is driving the base game. Because of this my base instinct is to lean in to the depression/anxiety/trauma tent where things have been going a little too well for him lately and he has convinced himself that he is due for something bad to happen. I am happy to once again acknowledge that this probably projection, but I know that my own mental illness(es) does not let my peace linger for long. Myungha is spending so much time with Yeowoon, Yeowoon who grounds him when his world is literally falling apart. Yeowoon who cannot contain his smile whenever he is around Myungha, Yeowoon who is downright desperate to bestow love and support upon Myungha, Yeowoon who has accompanied Myungha to the hospital late at night to be there for his boyfriend in a stressful time, and Myungha can’t have that. He loves his grandmother, he loves Yeowoon, they both love him and so obviously means that something bad is going to happen to them. 

gif by @25shadesoffebruary

[As an aside I am thinking about what the Author said in the final episode about wanting Myungha to be able to see himself from the outside, and how I took that to mean Yeowoon is supposed to be a reflection of Myungha and a journey to self love, and how Yeowoon told Myungha that something bad always happens to the people around him in relation to this hospital scene]

Secondarily, I do think being confronted with this choice at all allows Myungha to have a moment of reflection, and is clarifying for him to know that both Yeowoon and his grandmother are important people in his life that he doesn’t want to lose. That’s fucking huge, in my opinion at least. And for all this mission was cruel, it was the first time Myungha refused to complete the mission. He was asked to save one, he decided to save both, and the game could have been cruel and taken his grandmother and Yeowoon away for refusing to choose, but it didn’t. They both got to live, and sure Myungha’s mission to make Yeowoon happy was shortened significantly, but I do think fifteen days was enough time to be successful in his mission if the depression and the grief had not gotten to Myungha instead. 

Grief 

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Something about grief that my therapist told me once was grieving people love helping others. And I think that is the case of Myungha here just based on the way he throws himself in to helping as many people as he can, especially Yeowoon. He knows Yeowoon is grieving, he knows Yeowoon is struggling, and he can distract himself from his own shit by helping Yeowoon instead. But once Myungha is confronted with the possibility that either one of the people that he loves could die, the penality for failing in his mission to make Yeowoon happy looms over his head like a knife. Just like Myungha considered himself the problem with the debuff, he knows how high of a likelihood it is that Yeowoon would regress, would isolate, would sink into a massive low. 

And it would be Myung’s fault (in his mind). 

Especially because Yeowoon keeps saying that even thinking about going on dates with Myungha is making him happy but Myungha’s mission isn’t complete. Myungha has started to get low, he is not as engaged in his relationship with Yeowoon, he’s convinced himself he is going to fail, and is thus setting himself up for failure because he decides 15 days is not enough time to find happiness, but it is enough time to break somebody’s heart in preparation for a devastating loss. And maybe, maybe Myungha would have snapped out of it with enough time to spare initially, but any hope of that being the case was shattered the second Yeowoon admitted that he wasn’t happy because Myungha wasn’t relying on him. 

Myungha is so used to be self-reliant there is no way for him to break out of that habit in just two weeks. Myungha knew his death would hurt Yeowoon, but the final nail in the coffin for him was learning that his life was hurting Yeowoon too. And he almost got there, he almost did it, he admitted that he didn’t know how to, but he withdrew at the last second. He has spent all this time, all this energy, all this focus in to changing Yeowoon, he does not have the space to do that for himself. 

The Choice 

gif by @supanuts

The last moment I will really speak to as it relates to my interpretation of this game being controlled by Myungha as a manifestation of his depression is the author’s pen. Considering the fact The Author asked Myungha if he wanted to try again, I do not think if the Author was controlling this game world that he would have had Myungha disappear from it. Because according to the Gaga subs, the change that Myungha writes is that he wants Yeowoon to be happy, and immediately upon finishing that request, Myungha starts to fade. 

If we hold these game mechanics as manifestations of Myungha’s depression, which I do, it makes complete and total sense to me that Myungha would fall back in to the pattern of believing that Yeowoon would be happier if Myungha wasn’t there. Yeowoon has a modeling deal now, he has some modicum of fame, he has friends now, he has supports in place that he did not have before, so what need does Yeowoon have of him, when his inability to let people love him is what is now causing Yeowoon to feel sad. 

And I think that massive server error at the end where the world is burning and the universe is melting in to the game is a result of Myungha realizing too little, too late that this isn’t what he wanted. But it can’t be undone. The line he says when he is sinking in to the water about how at the last minute before he died, he regretted it. The game, the drowning here are one in the same to me. 

And for me there was just something so beautiful and hopeful from Myungha telling The Author that he wants to try again. We started the show with Myungha telling The Author miserable people can be happy, and we end the show with Myungha and Yeowoon finally getting the happy ending they never thought they would have. 

gif by @junghaesin

God I loved this show.

[jemmo]

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

[superdorkcat]

Found throughout European folklore, a changeling is a substitute left when a human child has been kidnapped by a supernatural being, commonly a fairy. However, nothing is said of when a child willingly goes to the world of fairies.

-------------

Timmy Turner is an average kid that no one understands… who lives in Dimmadelphia instead of Dimmsdale. This leaves him without the support network of AJ and Chester but with a teacher and a babysitter just as bad as Crocker and Vicky, as well as parents whose actions aren’t played for laughs like on the show.

Chloe Carmichael (who’s here both because Timmy deserves a sister and because I CAN FIX HER DAMMIT) has the opposite problem. Stuck in the shadow of her absentee activist parents, every ounce of her self-esteem is derived from helping others, which has resulted in her becoming consumed by toxic perfectionism. She’s constantly held up as an ideal child by adults who see her as nothing more than a pawn, alienating her from her peers. She may look like a little miss perfect, but in reality she’s completely alone.

Enter Cosmo and Wanda. Unlike canon, each fairy is assigned a specific godkid regardless of marital status. Meaning that Wanda is assigned as Timmy’s fairy godmother to give him the structure he needs while Cosmo becomes Chloe’s fairy godfather and helps her learn to accept making mistakes. Due to living in the same city and having fairy godparents who are a married couple, Timmy and Chloe quickly become friends. And then they find out that, after they grow up, they’ll never see Cosmo and Wanda again and won’t even have the memory to mourn their loss. So they do what any pair of broken, desperate children with the ability to make anything they wish for come true do - they wish that Cosmo and Wanda were their parents.

This wish has the unforeseen effect of making them changelings, children in a transitory state between human and fairy. Of course, the fact that fairy godparents go to miserable kids means that Timmy and Chloe aren’t the only ones that have wished for their fairies to become their parents. There’s also Remy (because of course the kid used to getting everything he wants would jump at ensuring he’ll never lose the only person who ever gave a damn about him), Molly and Dwight (the two kids who got sent to the Wishing Well with Timmy in the show), and maaaaybe a reworked version of Winston (Jorgen’s godkid in the Oh Yeah! era).

Now, the kids are enrolled in Abra Prepdabra’s designated but not always used Changeling Class in order to learn how to control their developing powers while also finding out just what trading the normal world for the magical world entails.

I could go on, but I'm gonna leave it here for now. I'm calling this the "Changeling Effect AU".

[respectthepetty]

*SQUEE!*

The first two episodes of Love for Love's Sake are perfect.

He is perfect.

He's gonna be perfect.

These two are perfect.

And I think there is color coding when they are together.

Cha Yeo Woon wears a white undershirt with his white backpack and white phone, and Tae Myung Ha wears a black undershirt with a dark backpack and has a dark phone (which I think are actually blue!).

I already love ALL of them.

They are perfect, but Ahn Kyung Hun is the most perfect.

LOOK AT HIM!

Perfect.

[guzhufuren]

queer television really peaked with Love for Love's Sake episode 4. "why are you so nice to me? why to me?" and "hey, we kissed. why am i the only one gay? you're gay too" and "can men kiss too? i want to kiss him..." and "you're not gay" "i'm gay, though?" and "i think i know why you like the sea now. i've come to like it too"

[thymo-leonta]

the funniest part of love for loves sake is that tae myungha cared so little about the novel protagonists that we never actually meet them

[dropthedemiurge]

As I rewatch Episode 6 of Love for Love's Sake, it made me think - (not a fully fledged theory because I didn't count all instances of system errors) but before we got the scariest System Error, one of the first ones that left Myungha sweaty, crying, gasping for air, he received a message from Sunbae "I miss you... If only I could go (where you are)", and now we know it means afterlife.

Myungha instantly gets thrown into a windwhirl of random decorations, ends up watching himself from the Black Void as he gets the notification about "destabilized system".

We know he's dying at this point. We know the game is going in his mind while he's drowning (ot already drowned). So what if... System Error - is his own brain fighting for life and losing. All the glitches come from Myungha actively dying. It can be all a long hallucination in a freezing water to bring him peace and happiness, after all.

So, at the end of the episode, after other system errors, Myungha is forced to go through a cruel choice of choosing between keeping in the Game (in his mind) his grandma or Yeowoon, otherwise the remaining time in the game gets drastically shorter.

I was thinking about something I deal with so often - if you don't have enough operating memory or CPU resources in your computer, you're forced to close programs and hope for the computer to stop lagging and work again. In fact, that's the notification Myungha gets: (not in exact words) "existing programs should be closed/deleted to stabilize the system. Please stay, we're focusing on the recovery".

What if his brain needed to forget about some things to save the strength and still keep him alive. To prolongue his possible on-the-verge-of-death state of being before the inevitable end. But Myungha refused to let go of either Yeowoon or his grandma, using all the brain power, so... No wonder his remaining time to find peace got so much shorter.

And as he made the choice to overwork his brain and keep more people in his mind, he immediately experiences glitches again, random locations, broken notifications, can't see himself in the mirror, he fears to disappear. Followed by the scene among floating bubbles underwater. Another sign of death knocking at Myungha's door.

It's just, other system errors ("I love you" - system error) came from Myungha unable to accept love and care directed at him (so, dealing with his source of stress - using more brain power again?), so I thought... Maybe he's responsible for other system errors as well. Maybe it was not sunbae cackling in evil and enjoying making Myungha miserable with his forced choice at all.

Maybe it all happened because Myungha was dying right at that exact moment, and he chose to die faster but try to catch his happiness.

(and, obviously, the countdown to 0:00:00 and Myungha reaching his happy ending with Yeowoon at the same time - endless happy afterlife, celebrated with the end of the game (his actual life as his consciousness is gone and myungha is finally at peace with everything), easily falls into this trajectory too)

[swan2swan]

The Yaz attack episode SUCKS because it's basically "campus shooting, but with dinosaurs", so it's really not that Fun.

Like...cowardly scientist gets eaten on his birthday abandoning kids? That's kinda funny.

Guy gets pulled apart by T. rexes while saving our heroes? Sad, yes, but he went out like a hero. A champ. He was pulling a gun! He fought to the end!

Babysitter gets eaten trying to rush her charges to safety through a mass panic? Not funny, very sad, but noble and spectacular despite the horror.

Bunch of mercenaries get torn apart by a freak experiment? Yeah, that's what they get for stealing dinosaurs and selling them.

Guy on a scooter gets chomped in the middle of mayhem? Sad for him, but also funny, especially because you know the guy won a contest for that role (probably won the scooter in-universe, too, making it Ironic).

But three random people killed and/or wounded in an almost-indiscriminate attack on a refuge? That is...not cool. It's Too Real. I Do Not Like It. There is A Thing there.

[stanperformanceunit]

Tae Myungha grew on me to become one of my favorite characters. He is so precious, so supportive, so positive, so attentive. He tries so hard to take care of and make Yeowoon and his friends happy. He defends himself and his friends. He doesn't let them belittle themselves. He has the sweetest soul ever, and learning that he was actually depressed and miserable before broke my heart. Watching him learn that he deserves to be loved makes me want to scream honestly and I will never get over it

[hotasfahrenheit]

This scene hits different on a rewatch.

Myungha looks so sad because he thinks at this point that his time with his friends in the game is limited and that promising Kyunghoon things about when they're older is empty words, and it's so easy to feel that sense of unease and regret, but watching it again and knowing that they will get to do those things together is such a relief and so good 💖

i just wanna give him a hug and tell him it'll be okay and to keep trying because things can and will get better, for all of them.

ALSO i love this scene for what it means for Kyunghoon - he's gone from "why would you be friends with someone like me" to planning their future together and i love that kind of friendship, that's how things should be. he's happy and confident in the friendship and the fact it will last and that Myungha will WANT to be around him for years to come and ugh i just want to squeeze him.

[bitacrytic]

So he died and his senior put him in the game as his "heaven"? Because that's what I'm getting and frankly, I'm fine with it. If he gets to live out the rest of his days with love and friendship, then that's the best thing to give someone who got so down on life that he took his own.

Good for him.

[icouldhyperfixatehim]

the absolutely babiescopic sunbae 🥺 when cha yeo woon's coach calls him away after the race: fatal to me

[crimeboys]

i always forget how much i love my stevebucky playlist until i listen to it again... oh stevebucky...

[respectthepetty]

Look what you made me do!!!

@how-to-be-a-tree, as far as I'm concerned, you picked correctly!

I was elated during this scene because I needed Myungha to pick the blue shoe and not the red-striped one.

I think Yeowoon and Myungha are light x dark color coded when they are with each other.

But I also noticed Myungha's backpack is a faded blue

And his phone has a blue cover.

So even though at the bar outside of the game, I'm unsure if the color he was wearing was blue or gray because of the lighting,

At least I know he wore blue while Yeowoon wore green on their beach date when they discussed Yeowoon liking the mountains but also starting to like the sea because Myungha likes the sea . . .

Which Yeowoon's room curtains are also green by the way.

And blue x green are to Korea what blue x red are to Thailand.

(I really think it has something to do with culture and geography but that is a different discussion)

And Myungha was the loyal blue running to Yeowoon who was in danger (red) at the beginning of all of this.

So even though I don't know if they are actually color coded, I needed Myungha to give Yeowoon some color, especially that loyal and calm blue.

Since even though perfect-student Yeowoon has the white undershirt, the white phone, and the white backpack, his entire life is actually very dark.

And even though troublemaker Myungha has the black undershirt with the darker phone and the darker backpack, he brings so much light to Yeowoon's world.

So regardless of the colors, the blue shoe meant something to me . . . and Yeowoon.