The concept of justice, punishment and mercy is one of the more interesting subjects this kdrama deals with. I’ll continue with what I said in the Himalayan salt.
I’ll post @growing_beautifully’s questions here and rehash my answers.
@packmule3, I too keep thinking and saying that despite all the omens, the vibe (if one can ever securely go by that) is just wrong for a tragedy. Even if both MW and CS are to disappear across the Sanzu, I think it will be in a more uplifting and heartwarming way.
Yes, now that we’ve seen how desperately she’d been longing to escape her prison and her fence, I think anywhere but Hotel del Luna is uplifting. Chansung (and the viewers) believed that she was longing for the Captain when she looked at the moon.
gifs from @liveasbutterflies’ tumblr
When all along, she was looking for escape. She has a bit of fernweh, or that longing to be faraway from her hellacious world.
I said this before. Hotel del Luna is a coffin; it’s a bigger and more luxurious coffin than the one that trailed behind her full of bric-a-brac and the ghosts of her people. But Hotel del Luna is a coffin nonetheless.
No wonder she wanted a sailboat! She wanted to be free to travel.
Yes, there’s dark comedy, (and quite LOL comedy at that), there’s poignancy, there’re warm hopeful moments and there’s a deity who’s rooting for MW. I’m thinking we’re going to get a few red herrings and twists to dismay us and then have an ok ending.
With every Hong sisters’ drama, hope springs eternal. But @nrllee and I believe that you never tell which one of the Hong sisters is writing the finale – the good sister or the bad sister. We’re not unlike Manwol. She too waited to see which god would show up in the end, Ma Go 1 or Ma Go 4.
Some questions keep coming to my mind: Why does Ma Go 1 bother if MW becomes an evil spirit or not. MW seems to be a specially chosen human, given the chance to wield almost god-like powers and to offer a rest stop for souls, in order to pay for her sins. Her existence bothers MG 4 who disapproves of her.
I could think of two interpretations: the non-canonical one (rolling my eyes here because Bitches never follow canon. We blaze our own trail.) and the boring one.
The non-canon: Hong sisters can be creating a mythology here with Manwol eventually becoming a minor deity for full moon and Chansung becoming her Venus, or that bright shiny thing (it’s not a star) that follows the moon all the time. Chansung as Venus is funny though. Kidding aside, these writers always single out the female lead in their dramas as this special, unique and gifted creature destined for greatness. They take a popular fairy tale and recast it to make the women a bit more empowered and liberated. Have you seen their first drama, “Delightful Girl Choon Hyang”?
The Hong sisters haven’t diverged much from their formula.
The boring one: Ma Go is interested in Manwol because that’s the nature of her job as goddess: to be interested in people.
Did Ma Go 1 just want to provide a hotel for souls and roped in MW for the job? Maybe as a counter to MG 4’s heartlessness?
The MG1 and MG4 work together. According to the Grim Reaper they’re one and the same.
MW: It was the MG4 who injured my intern right? The 4th with a black dress.
GR: You shall not number a god. Although the looks are different, there is only one will.
MW: She doesn’t visit as a form that humans want and it’s just vaguely a god’s will. Unfair.
GR: The one that God Ma Go meant to punish is the vengeful ghost who used to be your guest.
MW: If she finds it, will she make it disappear?
GR: The other face of the God Ma Go told me to take her back to rest.
The closest visual imagery I can give you is the moon. If you look at the moon and see a waxing crescent, is it not the same moon as the waning crescent, waning gibbous, waxing gibbous, full moon and the new moon?
They’re all the same moon, like the faces of the gods are all one and the same. You just see a different side of it each time.
In this sense, MG 1 isn’t there to “counter” MG 4. She doesn’t negate the actions of the other. She’s only showing more on one side than the other.
Isn’t it a good thing that in our religion, in Christianity, or Roman Catholicism to be precise, we’ve already rejected this notion of duality of God as a heresy? God is not the opposite of the devil. He’s not there to counter the devil. He’s God.
MW: God’s will is always irritatingly confusing.
GR: Being merciful and being merciless are both the same god.
If you keep the image of the moon in mind, then it’s easy to understand the mercy of the Ma Go sisters. It’s waxing, waning, full, half, and new. 🙂
Seriously now, if nobody gets punished for a wrong committed, because MaGo is sooo “merciful” that she can be persuaded to change punishment, then the merciful Ma Go = merciless Ma Go.
The victims (like the sister of the Escapee Ghost) demand that god be merciless and mete out punishment, most often the harshest punishment possible to the transgressor. If god is perceived to be merciful to those who deserved to be punished (like Ma Go was merciful to Manwol), then victims and society at large get angry at the ineffectual and unfair god.
That’s why the sister of the Escapee Ghost said, “There’s a god after all,” after she saw the train wreck. In her mind, justice was finally served.
That’s also why Manwol was pissed off when she saw the slogan “Do your best and God will do the rest” in the Spy Cam/Porno guy’s office. Furious, she said, “If this (wealth, status) is what god gives you after you try your best, then god is overdoing it (and he’s a bastard).” She wanted the gods to be merciless to this Spy Cam/Porno guy and smite him down otherwise what kind of god is s/he?
But what strikes me as troubling in the reactions of most viewers to the Escapee Ghost’s story is the moral equivalence. Spy cam/Porn is bad. However, in a scale of the blackness of the human heart, it’s taupe and murder is a charcoal black. As horrendous as the invasion of her privacy was, viewers shouldn’t minimize or downplay the fact that she killed four, five people out of revenge. She was punished for that.
Like the Spy Cam/Porno boss, she too, did her “best” (or in this case, their WORST) and God did the rest.
When MG first met MW, it was MW who was looking for the Guest House of the Moon for her fallen comrades. So did there exist a Moon Guest House already? Who was the previous Manager?
It appears that she’s the first owner, but I’m open to the contrary.
From Episode 7, after she almost injured Yura in the women’s restroom (ha! restroom = rest house of Manwol), Ma Go 4 said the Grim Reaper, “If the ghost is wandering around you should catch it immediately and sent it to the afterlife. Why does it have to rest before it goes? I don’t understand why they made that hotel and left it to a vengeful spirit like JMW.”
To me, the MG4 didn’t approve of the whole “rest-stop” idea because she thinks it’s a disaster waiting to happen. The vengeful ghosts when left unsupervised (or supervised by a vengeful human) will wreak havoc on the living. It’s a recipe for disaster.
MG4’s primary concern is for the living. She’s protecting the living. And if we consider her bad, then we have to rethink our notion re. a halfway house for sex offenders.
This is a rough analogy, I know, but let’s Manwol’s “healing spa” (as she artfully described it) as similar to a halfway house for sex offenders (or “registered citizens”) built in a neighborhood with children (is there a neighborhood without children?). It’s a halfway house managed by a registered sex offender to boot.
Will we oppose it or not?
I’ve seen many people, good people here, petition their local authorities to move that halfway house somewhere else (“Not in my backyard!”). But where? Will they allow the halfway house to be moved to a neighborhood with women? with senior citizens? out in the middle of the desert?
Remember these sex offenders are people, too. And they’ve already paid for their crimes and did their time in jail. Can we tell them to simply vanish because they’re POTENTIAL repeat offenders? What do we, as a just and “merciful” society, do with them?
Those who oppose the halfway house are similar to MG4 opposing the rest-house for vengeful ghosts. Those who believe in giving these sex offenders a second chance are like MG1.
Why was it so aptly called the Guest House of the Moon while Man Wol’s name = Full Moon. Was she specially created/born to take on this job of Hotelier of souls? In other words, which came first? Was MW put on earth to run that Guest House, and so was already named for it? Was she as a child, fed the story of a resting place for the dead, so that she’d go and look for it at the right time?
I explained the many “phases” of the moon in context of the gods’ mercy but I also think ManWol’s name is appropriate to describe the many phases a person’s soul has to go through in order to completely rehabilitate and heal.
Don’t you think so?
Are the Ma Gos working together towards one great plan or working at cross purposes to each other? (Here’s where the Christian belief in the Plan of God trumps this kind of mythology).
The MaGo’s are one and the same. But heeyyyy, if you think they’re complicated, you’re forgetting our Trinitarian God: One God and three consubstantial persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 🙂
Thank goodness for St. Patrick and his shamrock explanation.
Intriguing.
Yes. It’s intriguing to us because we like to dwell on things like this.
But I’m sure there are some who think we should just contend ourselves with the superficial and the literal.
Thanks for bringing it all together @packmule3.
I was thinking of our Holy Trinity, but as this is a non-Christian worldview show, I decided to not apply the analogy. I did think that our Christian God, who is both just and merciful, shows also the different aspects of God dealing with sinners.
However, I didn’t take the trinitarian or in this case, quartet/quartern thing into this show’s manifestation of deity(ies). There might be more than 4 of them actually.
I do like the analogy of the phases of the moon though, and that it could apply to Man Wol. However until the show bothers to make it clear, we won’t know how she knew to look for the Guest House of the Moon.
🙂
Even if this Kdrama doesn’t have a Christian worldview, I’m still going to bring it up because I have a grudge. 😂😱 After that crappy Angel-schmangel kdrama’s worldview on Christianity mangled the religion, I want my pound of flesh. 🤪😈
Yes, there’s definitely more than 4 gods here, just like the faces of the moon. One per night on a lunar calendar.
I don’t know how she knew to look for the Guest House of the Moon. Probably something she learned from old wives’ tales?
But I like how her name fits well with the hotel. She made it a “full” moon because she was full of grudges, when originally, it was just the moon, with all its phases and cycles.
In other news, Epstein, that sex perv, just committed “suicide.” Ha! The Ma Gos weren’t involved there. ☠️
I cant post much because I’m getting car sick again. But we’ll be home in half an hour then it’s just me and the sand and the blue horizon (and gazillion beach visitors, lol). I’ve to lather sunscreen though. I burn easily….
All the best on the long car ride! Look out the window or close your eyes! You’ll feel worse if you try to type or look at something in the car while it’s moving. I never got car sick until I tried to play the brick game on a long road trip!
One thing I’ve been amused to notice is that in every scene where there is a moon, it’s been full. Never a less than full moon, night after night after night. Of course, from the Hotel, MW can probably engineer her sky to only show the full moon. I didn’t take note if the moon is also shown to us when not from the Hotel. Hmmm no time to re-watch. *sigh*.
About the four MaGo goddeses, in a post in DB I expressed that we human beings need to reduce existence to manageable chunks so that we can deal with it. Hence we are used to divide everything in pairs. That said, ¿have you ever thought how hard is to think in “ternas”, that is, in three solutions for a given problem?. Our default is to think in dichotomies.
As far as keeping the chaotic nature of life, part of the success of our current society is for us to be able to outsource the parts of our life we want to keep simple in order for our minds to be able to fully tackle complex problems (example: you don’t need to know about the food science involved in the 3 minute Ramen you will eat nor the science and technology involved in the microwave oven you will boil the water you will put in said Ramen, and that saves you time to keep investigating in “n” and “p” semiconductors for next-gen transistors).
“Yes, there’s definitely more than 4 gods here, just like the faces of the moon. One per night on a lunar calendar.”
I vaguely recall reading someone mentioning 12 of them? Makes sense. 12 lunar Chinese zodiac signs (probably the same in Korea).
Very nice write-up, pkm3. Almost poetic in the first half!
Doesn’t MW say she hates the full moon? Can’t remember the context.
And yes, I read there are 12 MaGos too. But are there other gods? Is Reaper Mago’s henchman or the Death God himself? Or is Ma Go the God of life and death both? What is a water spirit? We’re dealing mainly with the dead realm, maybe there are many more gods and semi-divinities in the lands of the living, who knows?
12 months or ‘moons’ in a year? DUnno.
I’m not religious but I’ve never had a problem grasping the idea of the trinity. But it’s not really the same thing, because as far as I know the holy ghost and Jesus never argue, nor do either with the father. They’re of one will and mind, whereas the Magos don’t seem to be lol. Dictatorship vs democracy, in my opinion. But correct me if I’m wrong.
Our serial killer doesn’t give me the creeps like Epstein, or his unsavory girlfriend that might have been pimping those girls. Just read up on her too. Bad taste in my mouth.
“And yes, I read there are 12 MaGos too. But are there other gods? Is Reaper Mago’s henchman or the Death God himself? Or is Ma Go the God of life and death both? What is a water spirit? We’re dealing mainly with the dead realm, maybe there are many more gods and semi-divinities in the lands of the living, who knows?”
I was kinda scratching my head about the tiger too. It was “different” because it wasn’t “human” and for some reason the little girl could “see” it? And only the little girl, not the mother? Was that ever explained? So if animals have “spirits” if I squash a mosquito what then? Will they become a vengeful mosquito? Because it didn’t quite have its last supper before I ended it’s miserable life? Maybe it’s best not to think too hard in these instances. 😂
Yes, 😂 the tiger threw me off too!! So did the doggy who went with its master.
But ookkkay, I played along. Maybe the writers were “personifying” these creatures and giving them human attributes so they could also feel grudges (like the tiger. He grudged that he was taken from his home and couldn’t return) and could kill itself (like the dog who chose to stay by owner till it die too).
The dog is beginning to foreshadow CS very well now. It wouldn’t abandon master and it wouldn’t let itself be abandoned. He’d follow wherever master went.
Only children could see the soul of a great beast like the Korean tiger. (Age-ist!!!)
Yeah. The vengeful mosquito, right? Being reincarnated as a planton is what keeps me awake at night, I tell you.
(Sorry for my typos. Chubby fingers and autocorrection are a killer.)
In some of the side stories, the Hong Sisters are definitely riffing on Diana attributes, though adding their own spin and stories. In addition to her moon and death faces, Diana is the goddess of wild animals, and some domestic animals like dogs in her first incarnation. So a tiger (wild animal) and a dog show up early in the series. They really are using this mythos as a structural inspiration.
I thought I had said something about the Actaeon myth already, as I do think this story is crucial. It actually gives an insight into the Hong Sister’s philosophy, as well as Man Wol’s ultimate fate.
Actaeon was a hunter that spied on Diana naked in her bath. She caught him, was enraged, and told him he would never be at liberty to brag about this to the world. She muted him by changing him into a stag, at which point his own dogs tore him to pieces.
In the philosophical world, this incident was debated for hundreds (I guess thousands if you include the Renaissance) of years. One camp (Ma Go 4) declared Diana wrong, impulsive, ill-tempered and murderous. The other camp (Ma Go 1) said the Greek world had a history of raped nymphs; Diana as chaste goddess was exposing these predators and signalling her protection of the victims.
What I liked about the Ghost 13 myth is not only the extremely clever way the HS updated this story of voyeurism and reprisal, but that they engaged with it philosophically as well. Was Ghost 13 justified? Wasn’t it overkill? Should her predators be made examples of? Who was paying attention to her and her pain? I LOVED that Man Wol exposed the predator and made the Gods pay attention. She played lawyer, but did leave the sentencing to Mago. Good. But in her own case, will she be able to do the same.
The Hong Sisters do seem to tell us that both Ghost 13 and the male predator were guilty, but stop punishing the one and not the other who started the incident in the first place.
That’s why, Ma Go 4, this rest stop is necessary. To prevent more Ghost 13s, innocent victims to begin with (like Man Wol), from becoming vengeful and murderous spirits and thus with no afterlife or chance to go on. Ma Go 4 might be justice, but Ma Go 1 seems to be about mercy as well.
Thanks for that link to Diana and animals @Barbrey. Fascinating.
You’re welcome nrllee! There really is almost nothing random in the ghost of the week selection, as pkm3 proved with her essay and I hope I’ve enhanced with some lore. But I’m still a little stumped by the water spirit except as a highlight of fears and abandonment issues. It’s not as concrete to me as most of the others. But of course the Hotel was out of place this week – maybe the story needed to be as well lol.
I am not sure water spirit is a “spirit”. The Chinese has him translated as Water God. I haven’t watched. I have only been reading the comments and watching little clips here and there. Does it make more sense if he is a god like MaGo?
I admit I was distracted by the cutiepie Nam Da Reum. I couldn’t believe how time flies!
A few years ago, Yeo Jin Goo had been the “child star” guest-starring in shows as the younger version of the male leads, like NDR has been doing. But now YJG is a bona fide actor. I wish NDR the same luck (and work ethics) as YJG.
@nrllee
Water spirit, water god, I’ve got nothing from western myth that corresponds to this story.
I know the Korean myth of water god Habaek and his daughter Yuhwa but even that gives me nothing. Except – if that water god is a dwindled, dried up Habaek, he is the water god grandpa of Gogoryeo founder Jumong. And we sometimes speculate there’s something semi-divine about Man Wol. She’s a Gogoryeo refugee, maybe she was the last in that royal line; hence the interest by Mago?. If so, though, I saw no hints of anything like that, did you?
@Barbrey
MW is just this anomaly in the whole world that Hong Sisters have created. I guess without her there would be no story but still she’s neither here nor there. Not human but not a ghost either. Maybe she’s like a demigod but that would be weird. Who knows? Not enough has been revealed as to why she seems to get special treatment from MaGo.