Saturday, March 2, 2013

Discussion derived from E22 ~ Eun Soo's hint on her lost Goryeo self

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The discussion all started with this one picture... from sia3 to Hanjae first.
Here here... I'm working on E22 screencap, so darn sad. How can you bath yourself in such angsty??? This scene when Eun Soo refused to go back and asked him to hold her and watch her die. I'm bleeding, man. Bleeding. How cruel for him even though I understand her loneliness, but still, that would break him completely! 

Hanjae to sia3:
I love the angst usually, but I didn't like that scene. I understand why both of them reacted the way they did - CY saying things that he thinks would help ES make her decison to go back (but actually hurting her), and ES refusing to take the safe and selfless option - but I still wish they didn't have to do it that way.

I think the problem I had with that scene (including the second half of it at the beginning of Episode 23) is that it went all-out scream-fest melodrama on me, with some histrionics from Eun Soo that felt out of character. I understand the emotional turmoil that the both of them were going through and that they needed to hammer it out together even if it meant fighting about it, but Eun Soo's speech about how she'd wander about looking for him like a zombie was overly melodramatic. Choi Young lying that he'd be able to forget her and live well was the same - what happened to the Choi Young who didn't lie?

Sia3 to Hanjae:
Hmmm I don't think she was wrong to feel what she said. She said it because she knew she'd be lonely and her life has been completely changed after meeting CY. Life used to be meaningful to her (in her own way); but after having met everyone in Goryeo, her perspectives must have changed and hence, going back again and living the life she once lived (although I'd greatly be glad that I've hot shower, soft bed and modern bathroom to use... going on the internet to see my soupy faithlings)... she realised her life has no meaning without him?

As for him, he has lived as a wanderer without meaning before, hence to live it again... he thinks he can do it as long as she is alive rather than dead like Mae Hee. He could live with that idea better than seeing Eun Soo dead. I totally can understand that too. But no matter what, it was still cruel for her to say to him, 'hold me tight and watch me die in your hands'. In doing so, she is killing him.


Hanjae to sia3:
Oh, I agree completely with what she really meant - it is merely the way those lines were written that I had issues with. Eun Soo was never the sort to take the noble idiot route and she stayed true to form by choosing a short but meaningful life with the one she loved, rather than a long life without meaning. The problem I had was that the second part of their talk (after Young had sat down at the table) was phrased in such a way that it made her sound borderline insane.

She'd miss him desperately, yes. Perhaps she'd even lose interest in her daily life and be able to think of little else aside from him - I really felt for her when she told him she'd be alive, but not really "live." It should have stopped there, though, because at that point I think everyone understood the meaning already; Eun Soo has always been someone who actually lived for living, and this was a lesson that she'd been teaching Choi Young all along. It may have been cruel to Young, but she was simply expressing what she felt, which is what I've always liked about her. I'd rather that she aired her feelings/wishes - they can discuss them, debate them, even disagree over them once she'd done that, but it's still better than suffocating herself by hiding what she felt from him.

But then SJN overcooked it by having Eun Soo rant about how she'd flounder around in a strange world all alone, looking for him and the portal. It conjures up images of a madwoman banging on walls, and I didn't like where it was going. 


sia3 to Hanjae:
So you didn't like Goryeo Eun Soo *getting confused*

Hanjae to sia3:
Okay, here's what she said after Young sits down, she checks his hand and Young tells her that she's a strong person and he believes she'll be okay:

"Even if I return, I don't think I'll be all right. Unable to endure being alone, I may go searching for you. I won't be able to find the gate you took me to, and I'll flounder in a strange world."

That's the part I didn't like - she's saying that she'd basically go nuts without him around and all the while CY's trying to push her away by telling her that he'd be able to forget her and live happily. I took the "strange world" reference to mean that everything would be unrecognizable to her (even if she's in Seoul) because she's so distraught. Wandering blindly through the streets screaming his name, yada yada. I mean, I understand the sentiment - their love runs so deeply that she may never truly move on from him and Young's just trying to convince her he'd be okay so that she'd leave (even if he won't really be)... but still. GAH, Writer Song! What's with the histrionics?


Buguz to Hanjae & sia3 (who has gone to Zzzzz, hahaha!):
I think the intention of writer-nim was to reveal the time traveling conundrum to the viewers with this scene, particularly the line that @Hanjae quoted. ES was trying to give Young a heads up that the future she, would somehow get lost in a world without him and that she would continue to search for him in the right world. 

In another words, she was going along the line of 'ahha, I got it figured, but I can't bear to tell you everything, because that would make you and me heartbroken, so here I will be complicated and not going to hit the point'. That was what I comprehended from epi 23.  Did I like it? Not my favorite line of ES but I didn't find it overly dramatic. However, when I marathoned with epi 22, putting together side by side, the dialogue didn't make complete sense, and I felt like ES wasn't thinking straight at all  

On the other hand though, I thought writer-nim did great with Young's reaction.  I didn't think that he was lying but the man meant it. This was also where, I appreciated the whole series for retrieving to its main theme, the faith in Young.  It wasn't easy to plan the seed, much nurture it.  But ES did it for him, together with others too (Gongmin). For once he had become whole, both as a man and as a warrior.  This was her legacy and he would not just let it go. He could only protect it and live up to it with all his might.
 
Hanjae to buguz: 
Hmm, that's a REALLY interesting take! Now that I reread that quote, it is certainly possible that it carried a double meaning, isn't it? Writer Song may indeed have been trying to hint at the time-travel conundrum through Eun Soo's "knowledge" of it, though if so I would suggest that its use in the E23 scene was misplaced. It implies a hindsight that Eun Soo couldn't possibly have had at that stage, because we see that even at the end of E24 she had only begun to comprehend the "faith" factor and the reason for her journey through personal experience (i.e. wandering through centuries). Based on the messages she'd received from Future Eun Soo, the diary and strange "flashbacks," the only thing that Eun Soo could have been sure of by E23 was that Future Eun Soo had gone back in time to leave warnings to herself of what will go wrong. It would take quite a mental leap for Eun Soo to conclude that her future self was actually lost in time or wandering and unable to find CY based on what appeared to be fairly clear warnings regarding his safety. Even if the quote was more motivated by the need to express her depth of feeling than clarity of understanding regarding her future time-travelling, it still required her to make some mighty assumptions. Thus I find it hard to believe that the Eun Soo in E23 - who is predominantly worried about survival at that point - knew enough about the time conundrum to drop suggestive remarks about her own future.

Buguz to Hanjae:
Don't worry, your jelly mind still made sense lol. Although, technically speaking, I think it was possible for Eunsoo to figure the mechanism at that time, giving that:

- The various number sequences written down in the notebook indicated that many trials were attempted. She could have wild guessed about the reasons, including the need to get back to modern Korea or, the need to get back to the right time.
- She could have also noticed that all of the notes left to herself all centered around the wellness of Young, mentally and physically. Young, himself, raised the question as well as to whether there was anything written down that concerned with ES' conditions rather than his.

At this point, theoretically she could have raised the question of why would her future self be concerned of only Young but not herself. With that state of mind, would all that attempts to go back/forth in time was really to return to 2012 or was she trying to achieve another purpose of life? Throwing in the history backdrop that she was well aware of plus her true feeling towards the man, I say that she could possibly have it firgured out 85% of the game. As you stated, at this stage Eunsoo yet to understand the profound of her faith. Not until when she was left 100 years ahead of Young. This was also indicated with the vague and doubled-meaning speech that she gave in e23. Wandering around searching for Young was probably all she could handle right then and there.

Although the conundrum itself did make sense, lots of details around it didn't, particularly many parts of her memory. This is where I hope that the book would pay more attention since all of this should have been focused more throughout the story so that we, as viewers could follow the logics of the conundrum. I hated it when we had to sit back and tried to get behind the minds of everyone (like how the heck that all CSI detectives went from point A to B just like that??!)


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