This is going to be posted on soompi later when I’ve time. lol. I didn’t comment earlier because I was waiting to see where the writer is going with this. I still have to watch Episode 16, as well as Episodes 13 and 14.
@nrllee posted this on soompi. I agree with her and will expound on some things.
When I reference HR as otherworldly, this is what I mean. He’s like the Little Prince. Naive, childlike, untainted by the world. So he behaves like someone who is unconventional. He loves DO just as purely. Which is why he comes across as an ideal. He’s totally a person of DO’s imaginings. Probably why he came to existence in Secret when she named him. Entirely connected to her now and forever…fated to meet and fall in love. It’s their story. BK was always a minor detour.
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I’m sorry that this response is rather late, @nrllee. You didn’t tag me and I only found it by accident.
But yes, I do think you’re right. You already mentioned your ambivalence regarding Haru on my blog, and I know where you’re coming from. But let me clarify some points, okay? I’ll limit myself to three. The discussion on Heidegger’s “Being and Time” will have to be shelved for another day because I don’t want to bore people again so soon after my post on Hotel del Luna and Heidegger.
Three points:
First, re. being otherworldly and the “Little Prince” reference
I understood perfectly what you meant by “otherworldly.” And you’re right, Haru’s similar to the Little Prince, that famous character from that eponymous book by Antoine St-Exupery. His story is an allegory on the dangers of narrow-minded adults and the importance of a pure childlike love.
People who read that book would easily get what you’re alluding to. It’s this:
Just like how the Little Prince unconditionally loved his capricious, whimsical, demanding and vain rose, Haru loves his bubbly, a bit self-centered, whimsical and cut DanOh with the same pure, untainted, I’m-here-wholly-for-you love.
That’s why he didn’t care if he lost his life jumping in that pool.
That’s why he didn’t care that his scar was hurting him everything he changed the scene.
That’s why he didn’t care if he was Kyung’s sidekick.
That’s why he didn’t care if Kyung came at him as he didn’t hurt DanOh.
That’s why he didn’t care what his final scene would be as long as he was there for her.
Moreover, just like the Little Prince was a transient visitor from another planet, Haru too seems to have been transplanted in “Secret.” He travelled to “Secret” in search of DanOh. He wasn’t meant to be an important figure in the story. He was just a nameless #13, somebody who was even lower than an “extra” like DanOh.
But he was there looking for answers, just like the Little Prince was wandering in the desert, looking for answers to a lot of things, when the Narrator/Pilot chanced upon him in the desert.
However, you’ve also pointed out that you found him *too* perfect. I think there’s a reason for that. Let me get to that later….
Second, on the manhwa’s structure and reincarnation
I was the one who suggested that the manhwas be interpreted as a reincarnation because, essentially, that’s how reincarnation is: a recycled story. For believers of reincarnation, they’re stuck in this cursed (well, to me, it’s a curse) circular life. They’re doomed to repeat the same thing over and over again ad infinitum. People are continually being born into this world (like in the manhwas) without knowledge of having been born before, so they have flashbacks of their hidden pasts.
For this kdrama, the manhwa world is the reincarnation theory in effect. None of the characters can escape the perpetual cycle of birth and rebirth. For instance, Kyung may have a moment of insight and consequent change of heart at the last minute. But when the next manhwa comes, his memory of this moment will have disappeared again, and he’s bound to repeat the same mistake…unless he awakens to the reality of Stage early in the new manhwa or senses a déjà vu (or a memory recall) in the Shadows.
For real world “application,” viewers are right to feel dismayed by this kdrama.
The viewers would have to be extraordinarily stupid NOT to see the futility of such life that offers no escape for characters, be they major or minor players. And they would have to extraordinarily spineless NOT to feel that the setup is ridiculously cruel, and to wish for something better.
The viewers have a right to feel frustration, exasperation or anger that Haru and DanOh are doomed to this kind of losing, finding and losing each other again and again…ad nauseum. If the “best situation” for the couple’s happily-ever-after existence is to live a life of anonymity, a life “under the radar” or hidden from the prying eyes of the manhwa writer, then what’s the central message there?
On one hand, the central message is to live for the moment, to live day by day, to enjoy life as it is.
Ha! In this context, Haru’s answer to DanOh’s question is perfect then. Remember this? From Ep 10.
DanOh: Is this how the writer feels when the writer is looking at us? The writer watches us from above, and we move how we’re drawn and stop when they want to erase.
Haru: We can move even when we’re not drawn in the scenes.
DanOh: Ah. That’s true. What’s your dream?
Haru: Dream?
DanOh: Like your dream job.
Haru: I’m not quite sure. What’s yours?
DanOh: I want to be an ordinary person who can spend an ordinary day like today. I want to do whatever I want. What’s the story ending the writer is drawing right now? I wonder if I’ll be alive until I’m 19.
Haru: You’ll be by my side when you’re 19 and 20, since we’re creating our own story.
lol. I know you must have been dismayed by his answer as I was…because we were expecting him to give a real-world answer like go to college, have a successful career, be a father, travel around the world, win the Nobel Peace prize, and so on. But our real-world answers don’t work in this world of manhwa.
You see, there’s absolutely no point in having ambitions or big dreams when the characters don’t even control their destiny. As Haru pointed out, the focus should just be on taking each day as it comes, and focusing on living well each day with the one person he loves.
On the other hand, the *real-world* message can also be don’t stand out. Whatever you do, don’t stand out and be noticed by “the” writer, or by God, by your boss, by your professor, by your parents, or whoever it is that you consider your Supreme Being. Be content being an ordinary person because you can add on your own “extra” meaning to your life in secret.
Is this kind of life satisfying? Is this the kind of reality you want? The answer depends on each viewer. I know what my answer will be.
Third, on being perfect and angels
I agree with you when you said that Haru appeared to be an ideal and too perfect. I told you, didn’t I? that I found it odd that Haru didn’t rail against the writer like DanOh did in the beginning and Kyung did in Episode 18.
When DanOh said that the writer must be stupid, he only answered (something like) “so do you think we’re created by stupid writers”? Meaning, if the creator is stupid, then obviously and logically, his creation MUST be stupid because there’s no way an idiot cannot give birth to a genius. (There! I summed up the whole “Intelligent Design” theory of creation.)
Here’s the reason why Haru seems to be ideal. It’s the “Duino Elegies” by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic
Orders? And even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his
stronger existence. For Beauty’s nothing
but beginning of Terror we’re still just able to bear,
and why we adore it so is because it serenely
disdains to destroy us. Each single angel is terrible.
Do you get the relevance of the “Duino Elegies”? 🙂
Haru is an angel.
Throughout the kdrama, there were many forms of angel. You and @Barbrey discussed Squid thoroughly (and I’m sorry I couldn’t join you then because I was marathoning to catch up with you, ladies). I agree with you. He’s the fallen angel, Lucifer.
The other angels were DoHwa. That was so obvious. Jooda kept on calling him her “guardian angel.”
Then, there’s the brother of Kyung. He’s the angel too. That’s why he looked a bit off and strange. He would appear out of nowhere and give weird pronouncements like “Don’t change the scenes.” “Don’t mess with Kyung.” or “Don’t be dissatisfied with this dysfunctional family.” He’s the “Don’t” angel.
Then, there’s Squid’s ex-girlfriend. She’s an angel, too. That sisterly advice she gave DanOh under the 300-year-old tree? Yes, that’s all angel-speak.
Squid’s GF: At first, I was scared, too. No matter how hard I tried to escape, I couldn’t. I just wanted to be happy with the love of my life. We tried to change it, but some things never change. And things you didn’t want to change can change. It’s up to the writer. Sometimes, it follows storyboards. And sometimes, it doesn’t.
DanOh: What do you mean?
Squid’s GF: Just like you don’t know which leaf will fall next, there are no rules in this world as well. As long as your affection for one another is strong, you can overcome it.
Her words of wisdom? A. No hard-and-fast rules so you can your own as long as within the parameters of writer’s story. B. Love overcomes anything.
DanOh also becomes an angel to Kyung when she comforted him about his character setup in Ep 15.
But Haru is DanOh’s angel.
No wonder he always used to appear backlit so his face was in the shadows.
He’s her St. Michael, the archangel. There’s a St. Michael prayer that we say after mass, “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil…”
I’m not a literature major but here’s my interpretation of Rilke’s poem…from Haru’s perspective. I’ll go line by line.
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic Orders?
This copies DanOh’s lament in the beginning to a T. She’s desperately in search of someone to change her fate. “Help! I hate my character setup! Who’ll help me change my setup?”
And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence.
This is DanOh, too, when she realizes, “It’s you, Haru. Ever since I first pressed against your…err… landed on your back, I knew I could rely on your strength to help me change my fate.” She’s become dependent on Haru’s nameless character to change her fate.
For Beauty’s nothing but beginning of Terror we’re still just able to bear,
Beauty doesn’t refer to Haru’s physical beauty (…although Rowoon is easy on the eyes. I must give him that.) By beauty, it’s his “Little Prince” kind of noble soul and pure love. Because his soul and love are beautiful, they’re terrifying to behold and terrorize everybody else who’s less than beautiful like him. Cough. Cough. Kyung.
and why we adore it so is because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Meaning, this beautiful person, Haru, is much admired, loved, adored, etc., because he’s a reminder of the ideal or standards that others have to live up to, but fail. An angel “destroys us” doesn’t mean that the angel slays us with a spear or thunderbolt. It means that an angel mortifies and humbles mere mortals because he surpasses them.
Each single angel is terrible.
In this context, “terrible” doesn’t mean bad. “Terrible” means terrifying.
All angels are scary because they’re perfection, while humans are imperfect beings. Their existence is a humbling experience for a mere mortal who might think himself superior. Similarly, Haru’s “perfection” and his pure love for DanOh are intimidating to Kyung because he puts Kyung’s feelings for DanOh to shame.
Do you see it now?
That’s why you sensed that Haru is *too* perfect because, in a sense, he embodies angels.
Just like DoHwa is too nice and helpful to Jooda,
Squid is too perplexing for DanOh and the rest,
Kyung’s brother is too oracular for us
Squid’s girlfriend is too wise
DanOh is too easy to forgive Kyung for all his bad actions from the very beginning
All of these characters have been a form of angels at one point or another in the story.
That’s how I would interpret the opening stanza of Rilke’s first elegy vis-à-vis Haru and his perfection. I think he WAS designed to be an “otherworldly” character. He wasn’t at all a static character; he also had his own character development but, unlike Kyung who was meant to be an evil guy in need of rehabilitation, his character was meant to be a good guy in search for his permanent meaning in an impermanent manhwa world.
He found it in the form and name of DanOh.
There you go. Of course, my opinion is neither feminine or masculine (hahaha), and more devilish than angelic. It’s worth only 2 cents.
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I’ll finish watching Episode 16, and backtrack to watch Episode 13 and 14 sometime this weekend. My final grade for this show won’t be an F (as I threatened) because Kyung didn’t end up with DanOh. But it won’t be an A either for its worldview. I’ll know better when I finish watching the show.
Gotta run.
Yeah I always thought the guardian angel incarnate fitted HR. He kept going around saying his whole purpose was to “protect” her. He protected her even when she didn’t know he existed as HR (he stopped her from falling down the stairs with his back). When he was faceless and hiding in the library with the stained glass.
I thought it was obvious when I said HR seemed otherworldly. I didn’t expect to have to explain myself in Soompi but I did because others were affronted that I implied that he seemed “alien” 😂 and not “real”. I think they thought I was being derogatory? And they also had a go at me for daring to say that BK was the more “interesting” character. He was more interesting because he wasn’t straightforward. With HR you know exactly what you’re getting – he was already perfect, he had nowhere to go anymore as a character. BK was in a character growth process and being rehabilitated. They thought I was inferring that bad people were more “interesting” than good people. And that was me saying good people were “boring”. 🤔 I thought it was an odd assessment about my curiosity regarding BK. But they had already put him in the irredeemable basket and locking him up throwing the key away so to speak. So for me to even hint at the possibility that he could better himself as a human being wasn’t kosher. 🙄. Couldn’t HR stand as a character on his own? He didn’t need BK to be irredeemable to legitimize his stake on DO? That’s why there was this constant necessity to qualify any positive statement you want to make about BK with the beginning sentence, “I am Team
HR”. HR is perfect, he shouldn’t need it? By defending him it’s an indictment on his portrayal/acting. Was he not convincing enough? Is that why they felt compelled to crucify BK?
Anyway, watch the reunion scene by the tree in the end and tell me what you think of his acting. For me his face was blank when he first saw her..I took my cue for the whole scene from KHY. She told me how it should’ve played out with her expressions and actions. It left me wondering…she seemed to imply that he didn’t recognize her when she did in the beginning…but if someone called you by name shouldn’t there be some response? Be it confusion, or bewilderment? Then there needs to be a gradual awakening as the pieces come together in your mind and your face should register that epiphany. But he was blank… which is why his action next of calling her name and then running to her and giving her a back hug was weird. There was no build up. At what point did the penny drop? I really don’t know. He has a way to go yet as an actor.
And yes I agree that HR’s “character development” was one where he was in search of meaning…but for me it didn’t need explanation…his whole reason for existence was DO and her happiness. It was a given? That’s why he had no dreams of his own. No family expectations. Nor societal for that matter. He practically lived in the school library 😂. He existed purely for her. She says jump, he says how high? She consumed his mind…he drew only her and buildings… 😂. Even when DH attempted “friendship” on a deeper level, he didn’t seem to respond in kind? She was his beginning and his end. As soon as her problem with death was solved, he was no longer “required”. He was erased.
As an ideal he is just as bad as the “bad boy” preference. Nobody exists like that in real life. If HR is sold as the measure whereby one chooses a boyfriend, then we would have girls who bemoan that nobody measures up and they would be despondent. And they would be right because there was only one perfect man who ever walked this earth (And we will be celebrating his birth soon ❤️). Everyone else is a work in progress.
Rilke is too personal to me in some ways. I’d say because he’s an agnostic and existentialist, his angels are metaphors for feelings or emotions rather than anything concrete. Haru is an angel in that sense, representing free will and independence, beautiful and terrifying at once, as necessary to Dan Oh as breathing.
I’m on board with you, nrllee, in most cases, except he had an existence in the previous book where he had meaning and purpose external to Dan Oh.
So this where the mixed up story line between him and Squid – the script writers took major parts of Squid’s story line and gave them to Haru – mixes up our metaphors.
It’s easier when I think of them as the same principal, not the same person, based on literary Lucifer, i.e, the principal of free will versus blind obedience.
So what we have is our nightingale/philomel obedient to her script and creator, but her inner rebel hates the script and silently cries out for a savior. And Haru – the principal of free will – arrives. Our nightingale finds her voice and her love – of free will and Haru as well. They are one and the same.
There is so much I could say and I actually wrote a huge essay, but the writer’s confusion means I don’t see any comprehensive interpretation fully hang together. Which is poststructuralism, of course! I should be more comfortable with it! And on the subject of subjectivity and relativism:
If either of you get a chance, check out the play Six Characters in Search of an Author. It’s the first time I encountered the writer creator trope and it’s insightful and very funny at the same time. It’s about a family of characters who can’t find fulfilment because their writer never completed their play.
“So this where the mixed up story line between him and Squid – the script writers took major parts of Squid’s story line and gave them to Haru – mixes up our metaphors.”
Yes that’s what stumped me…and it wasn’t consistent. Then they suggested that in TF AND Secret, HR had no beginning? BK said that to him when HR was going to leave his side in TF. That threw me… why did he have no beginning? Was he really an angelic being in both comics? But he had a character set up and a job in TF? Therefore he had a purpose outside of his love for DO. Which is probably why he hesitated at the gazebo meeting with DO when she declared her love for him and he seemed to be torn (he had responsibilities to BK). He didn’t have any such qualms in Secret because he was a figment of her imaginings. So the Lucifer/angelic being metaphor didn’t quite apply in TF to HR for me (bar that little nugget about him having no beginning). It only fits his character in Secret.
I love the nightingale explanation. Fits perfectly. 🙂
And thanks for the explanation about Rilke’s angels.
“The Angel is a conceit, a symbol of the non-existent superhuman consciousness.” – https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/TheFountainOfJoy.php
That bit I understood. 😂. I need to read commentaries to understand poetry. And even then sometimes I read them and I still don’t get it.
Thanks for the suggestion about the play. I will try to look it up.
Btw, do you guys know the history of why #13 is unlucky? One reason has to do with the 13th Guest, variously Judas at The Last Supper, or earlier, Loki at the Banquet of the Gods. A 13th guest means dissonance, a shit disturber. That’s Haru!
Gee thanks!
@Barbrey writer probably used the Western ideas about #13 in EY then because in Chinese (and I think possibly Korean too since they have Chinese roots), it’s actually not a bad number. When you say it in Chinese, 13 sounds like “sure to live” (as in you are sure to live on). 4 is the bad number in Chinese culture because 4 sounds like “to die”. If you say 14 in Chinese, it sounds like “sure to die”. So superstitious Chinese avoid the number 4 and the number 14 at all costs.
I knew about #4 and 13 but not about 14. I was thinking on biblical themes after angels, that’s why I thought of it. The other 13th guest is the devil, because a coven consists of 12 witches and he was the thirteenth. But while the writers might be comparing him to a literary Miltonic Lucifer, in part, they’re unlikely to be comparing him to a devil in a devil worshipping ceremony!
Anyway – Judas, Loki, Lucifer – 13th guest disruptors (though through God’s will, who knows? – same question we have about who is writing the Shadow), but they’re all different, all once beloved, so the general principal of unlucky 13 as a disruptor, spoiler, challenge, maybe unnatural to the world (like angels including Lucifer) is what I get from the number.
(The Gee thanks above is in the wrong place, was a thanks for nice words about my daughter from you and pkm3 on the other thread.)
So a question about Squid. There is another angel along with Lucifer I thought of regarding Squid. I got the impression Squid had been on many world (in many books). Doesn’t he say that? did I imagine it? Because there is the Wandering Angel, the Angel of Doubt, who actually stars in another philosophy book where the principal seems to me to be an inversion of Heidigger.
I rather wish we spoke Korean. I bet some Koreans are having a field day with this show.
“ I got the impression Squid had been on many world (in many books). Doesn’t he say that? did I imagine it?”
Yes he did. And he mentioned that every time he was always the one who was aware (or the first one to be aware). He was relieved to just be an extra in Secret remember? He didn’t want any part in the main action. But he had learnt his lesson. No more changing the scenes. So I felt like he’s the constant through all the iterations. I feel like there were many iterations between TF and Secret otherwise why did he say “many”? So TF would’ve been where Squid learnt his lesson and never messed with the scenes again. He was therefore there in every subsequent comic to maintain order/peace? Explain the whole stage/shadow and nuances to subsequent aware characters? Squid was the “tamed” version of HR. Although because of how HR was “birthed” I always felt like he was an anomaly. Squid was planned and drawn in every time. HR was not supposed to be there in Secret.