(This will be short because I’ve a flight to catch. Thanks, @Cleopatra, for writing down the subs from Viki.)
Deity: You were curious about what I planted here.
DK: What is that?
Deity: A possibility. It grew up feeding on your misfortunes.
***
Deity: It’s a good night.
MM: Are you having fun?
Deity: It’s not too bad.
MM: Don’t ever put your hand on her ever again.
Deity: I never put my hands on her. I just put them on you.
MM: What is it that you want exactly?
Deity: I was wrong. You are loved by her. I got scolded by her. She said she was never miserable because of you. I always hope I’m wrong. I hope you guys are right.
MM: But we’re always wrong and you’re right.
(Deity resurrected the tulips and returned them to Doom.)
Deity: A vain hope is still hope. A vain love is still love.
I heard that there’s some confusion with the Dramacool/Kissasian version. They used “false love” for “vain love.”
Here’s MY version; I’ll simplify it. The Deity said, “Futile hope is still hope. Hopeless love is still love.”
And that’s what the Deity planted in her pot: Hopeless Love.
To me, this screenwriter wasn’t original. (To be quite frank, I don’t think she had an original thought in this drama.) This notion of potted plants was borrowed from Kim Eunsook’s “The King: Eternal Monarch.”
Remember the imaginary flowers in TKEM? The Magic Flowers that meant “hopeless love”? This is what I wrote about it back then:
TaeEul had always expressed faith in the supernatural element of the No Man’s Land. Lee Gon told her that the place couldn’t be explained scientifically, and that there was no wind, rain, and sun in that desolate place, and that a different time existed in there. But TaeEul insisted that a plant would grow in there in spite of the harsh condition.
The plant that grew in her flowerpot in Episode 16 didn’t sprout because she had been watering it. No, it grew because she thought all was lost.
To me, they grew out of hopelessness.
When she felt that her love was most hopeless, when she thought nothing else could be done, and when she reached the nadir of her misery, the flowers bloomed. The flowers mean “hopeless love.” They would NOT bloom as long as there was vestige of hope remaining. It would bloom when there was no hope.
That’s the paradox of the flower. It blooms only when love is hopeless, and because it blooms, there’s hope for love.
source: Resurrection/Magic/Hopeless Lily
To me, this screenwriter for “Doom at Your Service” is just rehashing this whole idea that hopeless love grows at the very instant when there’s no hope.
That’s why the Deity told DK that the plant feeds on her misfortunes. She wasn’t being sadistic; she was just being her usual cryptic unoriginal self.
I get that many viewers have become frustrated by the Deity’s oracle-like pronouncements. But most of the time, I just roll my eyes though and think “Girl, don’t reinvent the wheel, and think you’re some genius goddess. We’ve seen this already.” 🙂
From “The King: Eternal Monarch.” The magical “hopeless love” plant.
Oh @packmule3 saranghe!
Thank you for this! I am glad I helped! I was so frustrated with that translation of vain / false love. I couldn’t accept that a love can be false.
I am so in peace with your version on what was being said on that scene!
It totally makes sense!
I commented somewhere in the first threads on DAYS, when they used on Doom the “fate” thingy, that it reminded me of TKEM, I even posted two pictures with Tae Eul and Prince Buyeong’s quotes about Fate!
I am glad, we get to see intertextuality also with TK:EM.
Have a safe flight!
The Deity gave away the answer. “I always hope I’m wrong. I hope you guys are right.”
MM rejoined, “But we’re always wrong and you’re right.”
If that was indeed the case, then Deity herself had “futile hope” and she wanted the couple to experience this futile hope/hopeless love in order to know true hope and love in the end.
If hope is guaranteed, then what’s the point in hoping? Hoping implies uncertainty.
Likewise, if love is certain (like when DK wished for MM to love her), then that isn’t love. There has to be free will and a choice to love.
Looks like the writer is a fan on KES, lots of TKEM and Goblin references in DAYS.
Your translation makes sense. Reminded me of “faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” GD says she loves MM that’s why she planted the possibility pot despite a hopeless love.
Safe travels @PM3.
Another work week to go! Happy Monday!!!
@pkml3
I got more sense out of your comment than the article itself LOL.
Vain and False Love
It’s true that both MM and DK were rooting around vainly trying to force love on each other and with others (the nincompoops! LOL). We not only saw DK foolishly trying to talk herself into loving bad guys, but trying a version of ‘magic love potion’ by asking if she could wish MM into loving her. MM is no better since he tells her that she can love him, while enchanting her into almost kissing him. Well Mummy GD got fed up and separated the kids to knock some sense into them. However she’s doing it too cryptically!!! Mums have to be clear about what they’re scolding their kids for.
My subs had it as ‘false love’, which is also right … what they were trying to do was not truly to love, those were mistakes in comprehending what love entailed, but in making them, they learnt a thing or two, and from the separations, they discovered that they wanted to be together a lot more than they wanted to be apart.
@Cleo also mentioned the phrase that’s often repeated: “run away”. This couple has been challenging each other to try and run away from the contract, if they could, … if they dared. In the start of Ep 8, DK was still calling out a rant to MM that it was inevitable he should return. But to her it was still a conditional thing, a contractual reason. He hadn’t granted her, the wish yet, therefore, he couldn’t run away.
In actual fact, in MM’s voiceover, he returned because he couldn’t keep away.
(If the subs are correct, he is calling the feeling of not being able to stop himself from going to DK, ‘Tak Dong Kyung’. LOL. DK is the inexorable magnetic force that pulls him towards her.)
Of the two, it is MM more than DK who’s becoming more truly in love. In the meantime, GD is on the bridge, making a little stone stack, and she smiles that her plant has germinated in the pot. Since she later refers to it as MM, I take it that the seedling is MM who’s finally broken through the soil of hopelessness, of self-deprecation and self pity.
Continuation of Vain and False Love
I note with interest that in Episode 1, it was MM who accused GD of throwing herself a pity-party, by remaining sickly in hospital, but GD says that MM has finally come to pity others more than himself:
Ironically, this is exactly what we see GD doing: she’s taken MM’s word to heart. The next time we see GD, she’s got a pot of soil in her room ie she’s cherishing a plant more than the others. She also tells DK later that if the plant is strange, she will pull it out. Which is MM’s own advice to her. GD takes no responsibility for the other plants in the garden, but she does for the ‘good plant’ that she planted in her pot. Hence, she interferes with MM while she leaves the rest of the garden plants alone.
Since by the end of MM’s and DK’s conversation in the hospital, DK is (arrogantly) telling MM what to say to GD who kicked him out of her life, it’s DK’s turn to get a talking to from Mummy GD, and she gets pulled away to Deity’s Garden.
Episode 8 (Timestamp 12:42)
(Taking from what @pkml3 says… GD is telling DK that the situation is “hopeless”. Whatever she chooses to do in the contract, someone is going to die and DK is going to be miserable. She wanted DK to have no illusions about it. I’m guessing that this is why GD says it was for DK that she told MM he was responsible for her misery. If MM hadn’t jumped at forcing DK to take his hand, she’d not have this hopeless situation she’s in.
In addition, GD wanted to show DK the plant. It had sprouted well. It wasn’t a strange plant, and GD didn’t want to pull it out. GD says “I love him too. That’s why I did this.” GD’s “this” could mean removing DK from MM’s world as if she never existed, or telling him that he’s responsible for DK’s misery so that he’d have more compassion for her than pity for himself and therefore he could sprout, or both.)
In any case, this second enforced separation, reinforces MM’s awareness that he cannot bear to be apart from DK or to live in a world where DK never existed. He gives her a second hug, the back hug, in relief.
It was when it was hopeless, that MM realised how he felt. It looked like a hopeless love until DK returned.
After this, as I believe @nrllee said, MM became rather clingy. He wanted to do everything he could for DK, before he lost her again. DK has yet to love MM truly. She’s been receiving from MM, but has not given him much. She loves her aunt, SK and NJN more than she loves MM at the moment. It might be the case the MM will not be able to grow well until he not only gives but receives true love.
We wait for DK to be as hopelessly in love with MM as he’s started to be with her.
@packmule, thank you for another interpretation of the hope and love. I saw futile used in another site, but it’s good to see you confirm it. Hopeless is a very good alternate as well. Ah, it all makes more sense. I liked your term ‘oracle-like pronouncements’, because she is so cryptic.
All of the comments above have value to me. Thanks everyone.
So each of them has had a trial of being separated from the other. I think it affected MM more than DK, but perhaps it was only obvious because he could look for her in various places where she had been known by others, whereas she couldn’t search for him in the real world.
Thanks, dear Bitches, for your insightful analyses. Yes, I see so many tie-ins with TK:EM. I hope TK:EM’s Writernim is of the mindset that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, else there might be a plagiarism lawsuit in the offing.
I’ve wondered about MM’s assertion to the doom pamphlet lady that there’s no afterlife, in context of GD’s comment about instigating a reset when necessary. What if GD can do a reset like TK:EM’s endless time loop? Then there wouldn’t be an afterlife, but the same life lived over and over again with slight changes. So far there have been no other hints in DAYS that this is a possibility in its dramaverse.
What a lovely post @GB!
DK has a lot of loving to catch up on and it has to start with herself before she can fully love MM. Fighting!!!
DK is such opposite in attitude with Dam in Gumiho, right? Dam takes care of herself so that she does not die and she cares enough to fulfill Mr Fox’s dream. Although we can say the marble turning blue can be analogous to the plant sprouting also.
@GB If (and it’s a big IF) GD’s aim is for MM to live with purpose as “Doom”, she needs him to live for someone other than himself. Like a child. Their world needs to extend beyond themselves. First to someone else, then ultimately for the greater good. So he is growing. He now cares for someone other than himself (DK). He needs to go another step further if he is to find purpose in his day job for eternity.
@packmule3 I thought the pot plant was “love” too, but the subs in Ep8 confused me because GD referred to the pot plant as “he”? Which seemed to imply that it was MM. And GD gave DK the choice to pick between the plant (MM) and the ball (the world/universe). That she was trying to grow him as a being (Pinocchio reference).
Thanks @Janey. I agree that DK has got to love herself first, and she’s still not really figuring it out yet. I was considering that Auntie might beat it into her head LOL. At least she’s started asking/hinting/grumbling that she would like to get a nice meal out of MM in real life!
It never occurred to me to compare DK with Lee Dam. Both have got a marble that is blue or should be, although Dam’s marble only controls the fate of Mr Fox and Dam, DK’s marble means she has control over everyone’s fate.
I think it’s only at the end of Ep 9, that MM is starting to be more like Mr Fox in considering the urgency of being with (and taking care of?) the lady with the marble, before it’s too late.
@nrllee I agree that a meaningful life only makes sense when it’s lived for others as well as for oneself. MM is a seedling that could still wither. He has 49 more days to go while weathering the storms of a relationship, in which to grow so that he can weather the big storm of losing GD and maybe DK as well.