Whc1 - Blog Posts

the writers really said it’s not an ex best friend unless there’s some psychological torture involved

I forgot to say this last time. Baku, Gotak and I, we all know you visit your friend in the hospital and why he's there. But in my opinion it wasn’t your fault.

“I'm sorry that I forgot... everything that you taught me. how great it is to have friends. how nice it is to laugh. what you did for me... I want to try doing that for others.” — weak hero class 2

THIS!!!

if season 1 was a testament to sieun’s fight of self-determination — standing up for himself, punishing those who hurt him and his friends — and eventually realizing through beomseok’s plotline how damaging that sort of mindless violence can be, then season 2 is the portrayal of sieun’s reckoning with that, tempering down his viciousness, choosing force only when it is necessary, in an effort not to be cruel or do excessive harm.

it offsets so well with the baku-baekjin plotline — baekjin, a similarly intelligent and calculating boy who grew up bullied by others, who has that capacity for swift, harsh violence that sieun demonstrated all through season 1. but that’s not the person sieun is anymore, nor is it the person he wants to be.

“don’t cross the line” - that’s what embodies sieun’s approach to violence now. it’s why his takes resonate so much with his new friends at eunjang, who have all seen and felt very personally the harm of those who carelessly do so (jun-tae with hyoman, gotak with seungje, baku with baekjin). this is what broadly characterizes the motivations of our protagonists in s2, and it’s certainly a breath of fresh air in the vicious cycle they more broadly exist in.

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all"- The quote at the beginning of WHC.

And this is so perfect because:

This time Sieun didn't fight to avenge, he didn't to damage, to hurt, to win, he never fought for himself. Not once. This time, he fought to protect. And what makes WHC2 great is that you can actually SEE this difference in his fights this time. He is not vicious, just calculated, just enough to hold it at bay. He was calculating before, too, but this time it was subdued, quieter.

Park Jihoon truly is amazing as Yeon Sieun. Because everything this season, the way he acted genuinely showed the trauma, he embodied loss, hopelessness, not really belonging, the desperate plea to not get into a fight if he could avoid it, not to make the violence personal, Jihoon portrayed this all soo sooo well: from his body language to his eyes.

realizing that i actually was on the same wavelength🤞 as the whc2 writer was so surreal because tell me why sieun started becoming my mouthpiece from the very start of the season. the social applicability of newton’s third law (every action has an opposite and equal reaction) and the danger of perpetuating the cycle of violence were my Exact takeaways from the content of season 1 — sieun’s words were so incredibly familiar to me and that was SO Awesome.

whc2 spoilers

as if baku crying and blaming himself for sieun's condition AS A DIRECT PARALLEL TO HOW SIEUN FELT ABOUT SUHO WASN'T ENOUGH.

YOU HIT ME WITH THIS.

im gonna kill myself im so serious

HIS FACE WHEN BEOMSEOK ASKED ARE THEY MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU. HIS FACE. HIS TEAR SLIDING DOWN RIGHT AS BEOMSEOK'S DID. STFU. HE LOVED HIM SO MUCH OH MY GOD IM. I NEED A LOBOTOMY.

beomseok is told and shown his entire life - by his bullies, by his abusive father, all the way back to the fact that he is adopted - that he is unworthy of respect, that he belongs beneath others, and that he deserves to be hurt for it. he’s trapped in a perceived reality of give-and-take relationships, hierarchical struggle between peers, and friendships built upon facing a “common enemy,” and his perspective on human interaction and “acceptable” violence is extremely skewed by what he’s had to live through.

it’s tragic. beomseok was not ready to be the kind of friend that sieun was to him and suho, and beomseok was not ready to be friends with suho - a person who viewed them all as equals even as he echoed words and wounds all too familiar to beomseok’s past. beomseok was fighting and flailing, trying to find his place in the hierarchical world he felt he was stuck in, trying to battle his way to earning respect; he was not ready to recognize the genuine care and sense of equality that sieun and suho provided outside of that worldview, because that was not the kind of world he had ever experienced, and because his worst fear was to be the outsider. in actuality, he needed to heal his wounds and grow his self esteem in ways that didn’t rely on external validation. but… well.

in another story, beomseok’s arc could have been taken as a broken kid standing up for himself, and things could go very differently. but within the context of this show - delving into the damaging spiral of the cycle of violence - beomseok is punished for using the violence that he’s faced his whole life as a tool for his self-determination. he’s rebelling against what his father and bullies have told him, which should be something empowering. and yet because he does it in the wrong way, it all falls apart. his defensiveness and his fear and his resentment take him way too far into violence that comes to extreme ends, and his inability to take accountability (because genuinely, who ever even tried to do so in his view, other than sieun?) only feeds into blame shifting and worse behavior.

and none of this excuses him, and it doesn’t take away the very harmful consequence of his mistakes (suho!!!! suho nooo!!!!!) — but it’s very, very human. beomseok made mistakes, and the narrative didn’t let him get away with them whatsoever. there is no happy ending in continued violence, and so there is no happy ending for beomseok in this either.

“we need more complex male characters in korean dramas!!” you couldn’t even handle him.

whc2 spoilers

as if baku crying and blaming himself for sieun's condition AS A DIRECT PARALLEL TO HOW SIEUN FELT ABOUT SUHO WASN'T ENOUGH.

YOU HIT ME WITH THIS.

im gonna kill myself im so serious

HIS FACE WHEN BEOMSEOK ASKED ARE THEY MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU. HIS FACE. HIS TEAR SLIDING DOWN RIGHT AS BEOMSEOK'S DID. STFU. HE LOVED HIM SO MUCH OH MY GOD IM. I NEED A LOBOTOMY.

whc2 ep 6

baku, sieun, and baekjin having their little tension moment and then you have juntae and hyeontak on their Stakeout Date like :

whc2 spoilers

"i'll teach you how to fight."

"we're just....childhood friends.

i taught him how to fight."

i don't know who decided to change the entire baekjin backstory but FUCK YOU i can't stop fucking crying.

DO YOU GET THE PARALLELS YOU JUST CREATED???????? INSANE.

whc2 spoilers

just thinking about the fact that juntae gets introduced in the same way beomseok did, and parallels him all the time, and he's the one who ultimately tells sieun "it wasn't your fault" in regards to suho.

"sun & moon" okay but what about two moons who love each other with the faint glow they try so hard to muster up in the darkest night except that love flickers and dies because ultimately they need the sun's light to survive. haha.

"he didn't have any redeeming qualities" it's almost like.....that's the point. it's almost like a big part of his arc is literally that he's wandering around without a purpose, being cruel for the sake of it without even realising, as if he's desperately trying to prove himself to the whole world. it's almost like sieun himself recognised that which is why he couldn't bring himself to harm beomseok till the end. it's almost like he was mourning the loss of not one but TWO friends at the end. it's almost like being abused is a cycle that can easily tip a person into a pool of negative emotions which is incredibly hard to crawl out of. it's almost like a child will internalize the way they were treated and be incredibly insecure as a result. it's almost like jealousy stemming from inferiority will cause people to hate themselves more than anything and they'll project it onto others a lot of times. it's almost like beomseok's a fucking gray character not meant to fit into your classic tropes. if you want to hate simply for the sake of hating just go and read the damn webtoon. you can have your one dimensional characters and play with them.

nobody is denying that he fucked up royally, nor is anyone trying to provide a reasoning for it. we're simply being given an explanation of how his surroundings shaped him, how even if he escaped that pattern it was too little too late, and now he'll spend the rest of his life with crushing guilt on his shoulders. it's something real that occurs and it sucks for everyone involved and that is why it is MILES better than just using him as a blatant tool to move the plot along (which is what the webtoon did). you're still free to hate him but atleast watch the damn show properly.

“we need more complex male characters in korean dramas!!” you couldn’t even handle him.