The thread is now open for your discussions, @GB, @Phoenix, @agdr03, et al.
Enjoy the show! 🍪🍪
24 Comments On “Tale of the Nine-Tailed: Eps 9 & 10 Open Thread”
Comments are closed.
The thread is now open for your discussions, @GB, @Phoenix, @agdr03, et al.
Enjoy the show! 🍪🍪
Comments are closed.
Kumawo! 🙇🏻♀️
I’ll catch up with the thread. Just busy and very tired. 🙍🏻♀️
Thanks @pkml3, you’re really on the ball in opening these TOTNT threads. Would you mind opening either one general one for November shows, or one for Kairos and one for The Spies Who Loved Me? I’m wondering if I should post stuff on these shows in the Oct Bitch Talk or under Halloween. =͟͟͞͞٩(๑☉ᴗ☉)੭ु⁾⁾
I’m on and off checking on the US Elections vote count/results while working and commenting on dramas. It’s both relaxing and suspenseful LOL.
@agdr03 Catch you later!!
Yes @GB! Catch you later. So sorry I haven’t gotten back on episode 7&8 thread. I’ve been meaning to reply but just busy.
@agdr03 No problem. Work and real life come first. Our fun times should relaxing and not be stressful!!
Thank you, @packmule3 for the thread🙌 I’m still liking this drama, and we are at the half way mark now already..time flies so quickly😯
Looking forward to discussing wuth @GB, @agdr03 and anyone else here who is still watching ToNT😊
Oooooh great! Ep 9 actually explains the urban legend. I had not idea where to start trying to research something that I didn’t think existed even in urban legends. I still think it does not exist, except in this show, but it’s a terrifying ‘spirit’. What a horrible way to die, at the hands of what one fears the most, while unable to waken from the ‘nightmare’.
Will be back with thoughts. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
So intriguing, @GB🤔🤔 What is this urban legend? Eager to know. I’m yet to start watching ep.9. Will watch 9 and 10 together on the weekend. I’m too exhausted after work these days to concentrate on dramas😌
I just finished it @GB and I’d like to hear your thoughts very much.
Oh wait before anything, Lee Yeon and Ji Ah, get a room! 😈☺️
Ok, I like the way the brothers came together and it did finally dawned on me too what Yeon said about killing LR, like duh! 🤦🏻♀️ Why didn’t Yeon told LR that in the first place after trying to kill him? He could have saved LR again from committing so many horrendous crime. But maybe we won’t have a drama right? 😁 I’d like to think LR is finally realising that Yeon didn’t abandon him.
I felt Ji Ah’s tears when she was in that ‘what she fears the most dream’ with her parents.
So if Yeon still had powers in his personal underworld, does that mean that whatever sacrifice his assistant made, it was useless? Or wait it was only so Yeon could talk to Ji Ah while she was in her fake reality? The ties connected them together.
I liked that scene where Yeon used the spirit of darkness to find the Imoogi and took one of his shirt buttons 😆
After the ending today, I don’t want a sad ending too. 🤞🏻
@Phoenix, the urban legend is the Spirit of Darkness which I didn’t find any parallels for. However I’ll post on that in the Compendium thread.
@agdr03 I’m still gathering my thoughts LOL. In the meantime, I was ruminating about this.
Repeated Chants and Doors as Portals – These come together with the antics of the Spirit of Darkness, but I thought them very interesting taken separately. Hearing the repeated chants/song that keep one in an unnatural unconscious state or coma, is something that comes from external mind control in this show, but it is similar to what we sometimes actually do to ourselves (especially when we are emotionally overwrought), when we repeat a negative narrative that may be false, but which we insist on believing. We might be miring ourselves in cycles of unhappiness when we should be breaking free. No one else can hear the chants except the one being bewitched, and only the victim himself can break free.
The doors as portals, is an image I like (and which I mentioned) and the entry through the wardrobe reminded me of C. S. Lewis’ ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. I noted that the Imoogi tells the CEO: “The moment you sense pain in a leg that is not there is when true pain begins. … Once pain begins, the door will have disappeared.” – my interpretation: When one gives in to pain over something that is lost forever, as in if one refuses to let go of what is lost or one hangs on to the painful narrative, one refuses to (and so loses the means to) return to reality.
LR had to let go of his mistaken belief that his brother left him, betrayed him and would never choose him over the ‘woman’. (And yes, we can blame LY over this because he could have made it clearer to the kid brother aeons ago).
Ji Ah had to stop being angry with her parents, and clinging to the idea that her family had abandoned her and that she was alone. Once LR and JA confronted their fears and let go of their false beliefs, they found their respective doors. I like this image because this is a comment on real life and what we have to do to not be caught up in our fears or the repeated, negative chants in our minds that keep us from going out there and meeting our full potential.
Ramblings Episodes 9 and 10
I do have issues with the show but it does not detract from my overall enjoyment of it Or rather, enjoying the show does not keep me from noticing that the story is lacking. My main point of contention is that our dark grey to blackish characters are being nicely light-grey washed so that we begin rooting for them to have a warm sweet ending, but they have never admitted to the error of their ways, or made recompense for the evils/killings that they have carried out. They are being forgiven without ever having apologised with real contrition. And this takes me to the rules …
Rules Just Like in Real Life – Taluipa tries to be such a stickler for the rules, and wrong has to be punished, (but only when the good guy does something wrong, LR we see only got punished once long ago, when he’s been carrying out atrocities ever since) and that no rule can be broken even if it rights a wrong. The Afterlife has hardly any flexibility or imagination. Hence I look forward to a time when Taluipa finally bends or breaks the rules, because it goes so much against the grain. It will be the way she demonstrates that she’s able to care after all.
It is hard to reconcile those rules with how those who broke them (as long as they are not LY) get away with it. We see the Lee Rang is on the Wanted List of ‘criminals’ but he can waltz in and out of the Afterlife Department. So Taluipa is only able or willing to enforce those rules on those willing to abide by them. Pretty much what happens in real life if no other force is applied.
The rule of quid pro quo – Among the supernatural creatures there is the rule of fair trade/partnership, fair exchange and the gumiho’s code that they must repay what is owed
Whatever is given or accepted creates a debt for the one who received, and who must then repay that debt regardless of the cost to him. Very cold, neutral, and unemotional stuff which leads to abuse, as we see in the case of the CEO with LR.
This is particularly the case with gumihos who seem to be forced by the ‘almighty’ to live by the code, and who must repay what is owed. However those who are not gumihos and who could be even more evil don’t seem to have any rules to restrict them at all. This kind of unfeeling afterlife with rules only for some, and which can be abused, is too much like our present life, for me to want to entertain it. Why bother with the Afterlife when it’s no fairer or more just than this one?
A Child’s Tale
The charm of this show is its simplicity such as how it does what its titles say. It says it’s a ‘Tale of the Nine Tailed’ so that we can expect a telling of a supernatural story, and that’s exactly what we get. For events that occur, that may be obscure, show does not hesitate to offer explanations in backstories, or in illuminating dialogue by side characters who comment directly on what’s happening, on what they had expected and what they’ll do next, as each new event takes place. This gives the whole series a childlike, feel, as if we are children being fed, so that we do not chafe at our lack of understanding.
Characters too are not too complicated. The relatively ‘good/light grey’ characters evince great ‘familial’ attachments to those who’ve been good to them/those they love, and swear unending loyalty and protection even in the face of self-sacrifice. We can roughly predict how they will react to each provocation.
In the story of our hero and heroine, there are parallels. What was done in the past will inform and affect the present. What was not resolved before will again seek to be resolved in the present. If A, B, and C happened before, then there will be replays. We are comfortably entertained by what we can predict and yet we hope to be surprised by a twist or two.
By the end of Ep 10, I was amused that Imoogi (directly as well as through the CEO), was exercising so many ways in which to get LY to come to him, when all it would have taken was for him to have posted his address in a message to LY, because LY had been hunting for him as well. After all the effort that Imoogi went through to place CEO in TVB and hire Ji Ah and then to grow up to adulthood, so as to take on the internship at TVB himself, so as to meet JA, and through her, to reach LY, it fell kind of flat that LY had gone ahead to scare the whereabouts of Imoogi, out of CEO, for himself and went off to have a chat with him.
As expected, in an episode entitled ‘Deja-vu’ the conversation of Imoogi and LY went the same route as it did in the past. The same wants and needs drive Imoogi and LY, the same threats are raised and the same ‘solution’ is demanded of LY.
What I did like about this episode, though, was that Hyun Ui Ong attempted to break the cycle of following the rules to their logical end, to challenging Lee Rang to think outside the box and even while keeping to the rules, to figure out a way to tweak them. I look forward to how LR might finally be a protagonist that I can get behind.
On the whole this is a great show for those of us who just want an easy, undemanding show to watch, with enough heart and some conflict.
Random Thoughts
What Ji Ah Feared the Most – I can understand that the most feared scenario for Lee Rang was to be abandoned by the one he trusted and to fight alone against zombies that never died. However Ji Ah’s greatest fear, much to Imoogi’s surprise, is not the fake gumiho parents, but the very true-to-life ‘real’ parents. She did say that what she feared the most was being parted from her parents, but that does not seem the full story, because her feared scene was not one of being alone after being parted.
That home scene was too perfect. It had her parents being happy and attentive, her favourite food and happy childhood memories – so she was most afraid of a perfect family life, that would lull her into complacency and stop her from using her mind? Might that mean that she was afraid she’d forget reality and stop searching for her actual parents, or like what she thought … that she’d prefer to never wake up?
I liked the fact that in her mind, she did try to recall what had happened to her in reality, before her father distracted her, and that ultimately on her own, with LY’s phone call she was able to break through to her memories. Even Imoogi conceded that it was fair play.
Clues of an End? – It’s never good for a character in a drama to have a happy and good scene full of rainbows or to evince that they will live for a long time. Viewers like me will expect them to be killed off pretty soon or by the end of the series. Such was the case with Shin Ju this week, who told LY that he would live a long life. Now I worry about him.
Questions that We Can Ask – It’s interesting that this slightly ridiculous show does bring up pretty good questions to consider. First there was the question of ‘What is the most precious thing to you?’ and now, ‘What is it that you fear the most?’ These seem to me to be somewhat related. Mt 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Whatever is the most precious to us, should also be the thing we most fear to lose?
More Thoughts on Quid Pro Quo – The Fortune Teller in Ep 7 had many things of value to trade, but they could only be got in exchange for something most precious to the one trading, or of most value to the Fortune Teller. Hence the FT rejected Ji Ah’s musical carousel and took the Fox Bead.
The rule of blind debt repayment. This is open to abuse and manipulation because one can force one’s kindness upon a person, in order to create a debt, so that he will have to do one’s will as compensation. This was what CEO did with Le Rang, and somewhat what Ah Reum imposed on Lee Yeon, in order to get him to kill her, and so save him from dying to keep Imoogi alive.
I’m hoping LR will create a similar situation to entrap the bad guys and help LY. In quid pro quo, it’s about time that Lee Rang repaid his brother for all that he has received from him.
@GB Like your interesting analysis of eps 9 amd 10, as always. I’m about to start them. Will be back for comments soon🙌
Hi @Phoenix! I hope you enjoy these episodes. I read other reviews where commenters find Ep 9 the time when show gets really interesting.
Episode 9, I felt, spent a lot of time in the dream worlds, but perhaps that was necessary so that we’d get to watch the emotions unfold and understand what was going on with our characters. See if you can guess the part that I really liked in Ep 9.
o(〃＾▽＾〃)o
Hello,
I finally managed to watch until episode 9!
So far, what I liked:
Lee Yeon is indeed a very smart fox. He tricked the “Spirit of Darkness” Lady and Imoogi that he was lost indeed in his subconscious.
I cannot say more about LR, I have written what I feel in the Episodes 5-6 thread.
I have to say that I don’t trust him. We shall see…
As for History repeating itself, I am starting to believe that we might see something else this time…We shall see…
@Cleopatra I’m glad to see that you’ve caught up. Now you’ll be joining us for the long wait in between episodes. (′ʘ⌄ʘ‵)
Of these 2 episodes, I preferred Ep 9 for all the occasions given for the protagonists (and even Imoogi) to confront truths and make decisions based on those truths and reality. In the end, in order for the good guys to get out of their dream worlds, it was not magic that could help them, but their own desire to break through illusion or disillusionment.
For the arc of Ji Ah, I like the parallels. Ji Ah spoke on the phone to LY but could not remember him at first. He says to her:
– while JA had been waiting for her parents, LY is waiting for her. If we consider that he waited for Ah Reum, then he waited for 600 years. JA forgets her past life with LY and even the present day LY, but LY has never forgotten her. The past Ah Reum was the one who initiated contact with with LY, but this time it was LY who contacted her.
I like that when they met again on the opposite sides of the road, JA told him to stay put so that she could go to him. It was a nice reciprocity and balanced out their give and take.
Ep 10 was a little ‘unnecessary’ in that, even without the many plans Imoogi and CEO put on standby to get LY into their clutches, LY himself walked right up to Imoogi to confront him. The next episodes will be about how the opponents outwit each other. It should be fun, but I fear that there will be loss of life and 1 or 2 characters may be in line to be ‘sacrificed’! (^ _ ^)
@GB Yes, I will be waiting…Let’s see how that goes… (lmao)
I haven’t seen episode 10 yet. I was waiting for something like that to happen though. Since now the Imoogi knows that Lee Yeon had found him, he had to make a move.
I believe that some characters will be “sacrificed” as well. This time though, we get to see if that will happen while helping Lee Yeon or not…We shall see!
Are you okay?
@Cleopatra I’m very well, thanks. I trust that you’re doing well as well. You are now in your second lockdown, I believe. I hope it is not too boring for you.
@GB, It is not boring at all. See, I am working 🙂
Yes, I think it was time for JA to do something for LY…
He has saved her gazillion times…
Howdy! 😊
@GB, loved your thoughts on episode 9 and 10. I especially liked the real life question of ‘what do you fear the most?’ and overcoming that yourself bravely by facing and accepting it.
I felt Ji Ah didn’t want to go back to reality while she was with her parents. It was such a happy life and one that she truly wished for most of her life.
At first I didn’t understand why Ah Reum got killed by LY but when LR and TV station president was shown the rings too, it dawned on me. Debts needs to be paid and it doesn’t matter whether it will hurt someone.
I hope so too that LR will find a way to pay his debt but still be able to help LY in fighting the Imoogi. I saw an Instagram post where Kim Bum finished his filming for the drama so he’s definitely going.
Why is Taluipa always so stern/snarky to her husband? 😬 She’s so mean to him. I felt bad when he was going to give her flowers for their anniversary but she scolded and almost hit him too. 🤦🏻♀️
Hi @Cleopatra 👋🏻
Glad to have you watching this series with us. 😊
Hopefully it’ll be entertaining right to the end.
@agdr03 Hi there! Thank you for having me!
I saw a 11 episode preview where LR says to Lee Yeon to die? I am kinda sad if that is true.
Kim Yong-Ji finished her filming as well. I saw an IG post two days ago!
Maybe they are wrapping it up?
You’re welcome @Cleopatra 😊
Maybe the preview is showing us that but there’s a secret pack between the brothers already? This is my wishful thinking. 😉
Oh so it seems like Yuri will soon go too. Interesting. Thanks for the heads up. 😊
@agdr03,
I hope so too… You are welcome!