confinement red flag ml when the mc escapes: *rage, killing intent, swears to punish them once they find them to the point that they'll never think of doing this again*
confinement red flag ml when the mc escapes: *rage, killing intent, swears to punish them once they find them to the point that they'll never think of doing this again*
Dat Essay about Jinu (KPDH) bcs I'm tired of first-time reactors saying he's a scumbag that deserves his 400 years suffering
I will not disclose any names bcs not only I don't care enough to know, I also don't think that's ethical. Sorry about the low-definition pics, I used my phone to take screenshots lol. Also, before you go in: SPOILERS ALERT since it's about Jinu's past, duh. Watch KPDH first if you want to understand the full context.
So I've watched KPDH and following almost every reaction videos since I'm starving for content. But unfortunately, almost every reactors are saying how Jinu is a villain; didn't trust him at first and when Gwima called out his lie, said "called it! I knew he's bad, we shouldn't have trusted him, he shouldn't be the LI, he's a bad example of LI, etc etc" without saying the bigger picture. Some are even outright saying that he's a bad writing or a bad character. Of course, there are some who has more empathy with him, but that's only the minority. Only like 2 people out of 10.
So first of all, let me be clear. No hate for any of these creators. It's understandable why they think that bcs the writings made it clear that Jinu is not the protagonist; he is an antagonist, but not a villain. The villain in KPDH is obviously Gwima. Jinu is just his unwilling minion. I feel like some people forget that just bcs Jinu is a demon that he used to be human too.
Please look at this example. Does this look like a face of a willing minion to you?
You are made to be wary of Jinu and his motives bcs the writings made it that way. We are seeing things through the girls' perspectives, esp Rumi. She didn't trust Jinu at first, but over time, she opened up and lowered her guard down. Some of the reactors think the relationship progresses too fast (but the movie has time constraint, i don't think there is anything to be done about this). Some reactors even think is dumb of Rumi to be vulnerable around Jinu during "Free", knowing that he works for Gwima.
So that issue aside, I want to talk about how everyone reacted when Gwima revealed the "truth" about Jinu's past.
That he "abandoned" his family.
Many people reacted with disgust, and saying stuff like "i knew he's bad", or "he deserve this" or "Rumi shouldn't have trusted him".
So I have to open this argument by saying that Jinu is a very unreliable narrator of his own story. In case you didn't notice, Jinu has extremely low self-esteem. He thinks of himself as a traitor, already having heard all of his past shame and guilt whispered into his ears by Gwima for 400 years. When the old lady in the park called him hopeless, Jinu just calmly accepted it. To him, he is a selfish, shameless traitor, hopeless and irredeemable. To him, his sin is his identity.
Even when it's obvious he didn't want to, or that he was forced to, he still feel like he was the one at fault for leaving his family. Does this like a face of someone who willingly left his family to die?
It's obvious that he'd been beating himself over this for the rest of his life. He lives a miserable life, both as a human and a demon, with this shame and guilt being dangle over his face every time he felt a little bit of positive emotion, because according to him, demons only deserve being miserable and live with their shame and guilt for their whole existence. That's what he believed.
Gwima said, "Don't think you can escape what you are." He said "what" instead of "who" to make sure that Jinu knows he is not a person anymore, but a personification of his sins. Which is fucked up and very in-character as a villain.
So for 400 years living as a demon, serving Gwima, Jinu has been living this way. His human identity chipped away into just a personification of sin. It's incredible that he still has some semblance of humanity compared to the rest of Saja Boys.
I read somewhere that Jinu is depicted to be the only person to have black hair to emphasize his naturality. The writers wants to make sure he is different than the rest of the Saja Boys. Other than to show the popularity of hair-dye as self-expression in Kpop, Jinu is also depicted as the only one who has black hair to make sure he is still has the natural humanity within him.
Also, maybe it's because all the reactors who I have been watching so far have been westerners, but I think they missed the subtle way Gwima has been manipulating Jinu.
We know that Jinu has a beautiful voice and he was trying to feed his family by busking the streets, but to no avail. And that was the first time he heard Gwima's voice. A reactor even commented that it's his fault for not "marrying a rich lady with that handsome face" to elevate his family from poverty (I hate this implication that he had to stoop to prostitution, so not only women are safe from this lol) without even knowing the Korean tradition where no noble ladies wouldn't even want to be within a two meters of his vicinity for how poor he was.
When Jinu first heard Gwima, he made a deal with him, probably to help his family escape poverty. But knowing how demons worked, Gwima most probably didn't include the word 'family' in the deal and that Jinu was tricked into believing that the deal included his family as a package. Let's face it, most probably, Gwima only elevated Jinu's social status on purpose; to make sure Jinu feels shame and guilt for abandoning his family for the new social status and comfortable life. It's how demons usually works.
When we see the truth of Jinu's past, we can see he was holding his sister's hand when the guards pointing their glaives at both his mother and sister. Literally, if he tried to bring them inside the palace, they will be killed. And if Jinu rejected the emperor's invitation to the palace, he and his family will be killed for the offense of rejecting the emperor's order. There is no middle ground here.
Theory time!
After that happened, Jinu must've complained to Gwima, accusing him of lying bcs he promised to save his family. But Gwima, in the big demon villain, would've said "oh, but I never said I would save your family, I said I would help you. It's your fault for not abandoning them, and not me." You know, the classic manipulative gaslighting style that consumed Jinu for the rest of his human life until he was dragged to hell.
I believed that Jinu was actually a selfless person. The fact that he busked the streets to feed his family, and even in his demon life, he made multiple hats for Derpy and Sussie; those are not the actions of a selfish person. He has compassion and empathy.
We also know that Derpy and Sussie are divine beasts. We don't know how Jinu met them, but the fact that Derpy and Sussie only hangs out around him even when he is physically a demon, must mean something. No divine beasts would've willingly hung around a demon for no reason. Now this is just a theory of mine, but I think Derpy and Sussie are attracted to his compassion that is not typical of a demon.
According to the writers, Jinu still has some remains of his human soul. My theory, that is why he still have his memories and why he still hears Gwima's voices in his ears. I think, the moment Gwima erase his memories will be the time where he lost his soul, his humanity completely and becomes complete demon, like the rest of the underworld's citizens. He will lose all of his human features and all human needs; he will be completely tied to, enslaved to Gwima and will be completely dependent on souls to feed. That's when Jinu will be completely hopeless.
But even when he has some of his humanity still, Jinu just doesn't believe that his soul can be saved.
Which is why he is attracted to Rumi.
Not only Rumi is a demon hunter who is part demon, she believed that there is hope for him. Rumi saw something in him that he never thought he could have; salvation.
I believe in their duet, it read clearly how Jinu feels about her. Some reactors think that Jinu is still lying during the song, but isn't it a rule in a musical, that everything sung during a song is the real feelings instead of what showed before or after the song. I think that Jinu's lyrics are conveying his real feelings towards himself and Rumi. He wants to trust in Rumi, believe that he still has something within him worth saving.
So yeah. I think Jinu is just someone who made a mistake. He tried hard to protect and provide to his family as best as he could, even made a deal with the devil to do it.
But unfortunately, as is every deal made with a devil, it wasn't an honest deal. He got the short stick and got scammed by Gwima, lost his family in the process, and gaslighted into believing that all of it was his own fault.
When an innocent child gave him a drawing of himself, with a note: you have a beautiful soul, he looks sad. Sad and in denial. Like he wants to believe it so badly.
But he knows he's been put down by Gwima everytime so he doesn't want to believe it but he wants to so badly. He wants to be redeemed. He wants to saved so badly.
That's why I think Jinu and his relationship with Rumi is so beautiful. It might not start as a healthy one and Jinu might only approach her for his own mission, but Rumi offers him something he had never been offered before: freedom. And it's ultimately what caused him to make his final decision; sacrificing himself to save Rumi and the Huntrix.
He said, "[Rumi] gave him his soul back" but in reality, I think it was always already inside him this whole time. He just couldn't see it or believe that it was redeemable in the first place. He just needs someone else's perspective to see that he is, in fact, still good and has always been good.
It was this decision that ultimately saves and redeem his soul. By giving his soul to Rumi, now he is free to be reincarnated and start another life anew. Away from the underworld or Gwima.
Also, unlike other people, I need to confess that I think the writer's decision to kill Jinu is a good one. It's a good completion of his character arc. Other people said that sacrificing himself is what redeemed him to them, but I think to opposite.
For me personally, I think Jinu has always been redeemable. He just thinks he's not. He has always deserved to be saved and he doesn't have to sacrifice himself to get that redemption. But for him, because he feels indebted to Rumi for giving him that hope, he wants to do it. Because he has such a low self-esteem in the first place, he thinks this is the only way he can do to undo his past mistakes.
So please consider these things before making assumptions. Just because the writers respect us by not giving us the whole context doesn't mean we have to be illiterate, ok.
Anyways, thank you for coming to my TEDtalk. Have a great day, everyone.
KPop Demon Hunters theory on the Honmoon & Rumi's powers:
Okay so I am like 75% sure that Celine was full of shit when she said that the Golden Honmoon would remove Rumi's patterns. Rumi seems to be a largely unprecedented hybrid so it's far more likely that Celine herself doesn't know what will happen to her when the Honmoon is fully sealed, especially given that the Honmoon has also never been fully sealed either. It's unclear what all the ramifications of that would be and those ramifications just being purely positive and happening to have the ideal outcome according Celine seems implausible.
To that end, I think the real reason that Rumi's patterns kept increasing as the Honmoon got closer to completion was because something else was going on. The patterns seem to connect to Gwi Ma and the Honmoon seals away everything connected to Gwi Ma, so the most plausible supposition based on that information is, I think, that anything with that Gwi Man connection would get permanently sealed away with him by the Golden Honmoon.
But are all patterns indeed connected to Gwi Ma?
I think not, actually.
Rumi doesn't hear Gwi Ma the way that other demons do. This could be because she's spent her entire life on the other side of the barrier, but as we see with Jinu, Gwi Ma can grab demons connected to him and yoink them across whenever he feels like it. It could then instead be that Rumi was protected by Gwi Ma's ignorance of her existence -- she didn't hear him because he never even thought to look for her -- but if that was the situation, then Gwi Ma definitely would have grabbed her as soon as Jinu reported on her patterns.
Even after Rumi goes full demon, she doesn't seem to be connected to Gwi Ma or susceptible to his influence.
So my theory is, Rumi's dad was a demon, yes, but not all demons are connected to Gwi Ma. Gwi Ma is just one demon king, the one that the hunters focus on especially because of his habit of devouring souls (and because their powers seem to work especially well on him). The patterns are demonic but only those who have made bargains with Gwi Ma have their demonic natures bound into servitude to him. Thus, Rumi is not connected to Gwi Ma.
But Rumi is connected to the Honmoon. For the past five years she's helped strengthen it. Her voice is part of it and her soul is part of it. When her demon powers start to manifest, they ripple through the Honmoon.
So I think Rumi's patterns were starting to spread because her powers were increasing, because she is a demon connected to a massive spiritual network that is powered by human souls. Her voice failing at the same time was a consequence of her anxiety and burnout, not the patterns actually doing anything to her singing (except indirectly). In fact the reason her demon powers were getting stronger was because the Honmoon was getting stronger.
A fun idea to go with this interpretation: if Rumi's voice hadn't given out and Huntrix had rested up and resolved some stuff before properly completing the Golden Honmoon, Rumi would have still ended up going Full Demon Mode because she would have unwittingly created like a perfect base of power for herself. She would have become a demon king, comparable in might to Gwi Ma. Maybe that's even part of what was going on -- through her connection to the Honmoon, that was sealing Gwi Ma away, Rumi was also unwittingly taking his power for herself. This gets way more fanfic-y but I think it's quite fun to contemplate. Rumi thinks she's going to turn herself full human and instead she ends up usurping a millennia-old demon king and stealing his seat of power. Surprise!
You are a fan of internationally-acclaimed K-pop group Huntrix. They drop a new single to wild success and its debut performance is canceled without clear explanation. Huntrix's management says something about a medical condition with the lead singer.
At the same time a new boyband debuts with a song that tops all the charts. The boyband doesn't seem to have a management company. Or names. Maybe that doesn't matter because their sound IS catchy. Huntrix is completely out of the public eye except for two appearances alongside this new boyband where they are there exclusively to beef. It's maybe a PR stunt. It's maybe because Rumi is exes with one of the only two named members of the Saja Boys.
People start going missing at a rate 4x the national average. You probably wouldn't even know about this except that 3 of the missing people were big names on Stan Twitter so it's kind of a big deal. There are four different high-traction posts claiming all the recent missing people were Saja Boy fans. But that's like claiming all the recent missing people drank water and breathed air.
Rumi is still on medical leave but Huntrix management is saying Huntrix WILL be at the K-pop Awards. Someone on Twitter's uncle's friend works in a recording studio and he says Huntrix is debuting a song which tells the Saja Boys to die. The exes theory gets a lot of traction. Twitter tries to doxx Jinu to confirm the theory but no one can figure out who he is. Twitter tries to doxx the other Saja Boys to the same lack of success. One account said she had "a lead" but her Twitter has been silent for 72 hours since.
Rumi is back from medical leave for the K-pop Awards just in time to have a massive falling-out and break-up on stage. This probably devastated you but you don't really remember it. The Saja Boys invite everyone to a concert. A lot of people who went don't remember going, and you'd call that suspicious except you also went and don't remember going.
Somehow no one in the crowd of 10,000 thought to record the concert on their phone. Maybe there was a "no phones" rule but usually there are still leaks. No one has any video or photo evidence of this concert happening. However you all collectively remember hearing "What It Sounds Like" at the concert (before it debuted 4 days later from Huntrix's label.) This does not make a lot of sense because this was a Saja Boys concert, supposedly. Someone says they saw Zoey impale at least one of the Saja Boys. You would brush this off as a stupid rumor but 2-dozen other people are saying the same thing and you a little bit remember it too.
There's a lot of people saying "Let's wait for an official statement from the Saja Boys" on Twitter but they've been saying that for 2 weeks now and no one has seen or heard from them since the concert. There's a lot of people saying "Zoey killed them fr" which was a joke at first and now, is not not a joke, but it hits a little different.
Most of you are kinda over SB Twitter at this point so you kind of don't care anymore but there are a few remaining fans who've doubled down on the doxxing effort to figure out if they're okay. It's not going well. One person claims to have found Jinu's identity but everyone thinks she's stupid because that guy died literally 400 years ago. YES the royal court's painting of him looks identical and yes that guy was a singer too, but come on, the K-pop look is 90% make-up anyway.
The best thing they did for Jinu in KPop Demon Hunters was let him act like prey. Apart from the "I made the hat for the tiger but the bird kept stealing it" bit his most winning moments are absolutely when he's fleeing in terror. They should have done more of that. Let the man scream a bunch. I do not believe he set up the mannequin as an ice breaker, he fully expected that Rumi would try to kill him and was taking a serious precaution, and he is absolutely trying not to piss himself in like half their interactions. The smooth talk and quips are pure bravado + an attempt to derail (literally using choo-choo trains to derail at one point lol).
Before he saw her markings she was like an inch away from killing him and he knew it and he was trying not to panic. Hunters are supernaturally strong and Rumi has even more juice courtesy of being half demon. Nightmare fuel for Mr. Self-Preservation.
Look I'm sorry to anyone who thought the Saja Boys were a real band, but it was obviously fake from the beginning.
Huntr/x has been doing this gimmick for years where they'll put on a performance and some actors dressed up like demons will "interrupt" it or get into some choreo fights on stage and stuff. If you're a fan you know, the demons usually symbolize things like industry corruption, Mira's struggle with her family, Rumi being in the closet, etc, and there's lots of hints and secret messages to the fans in what they're wearing or how they show up. Check out huntresx5evah on blsky they've got an extensive examination of the "demons" over the years and what the messages to the fans are.
In the concert before Golden was released, the demons were dressed like flight attendants. That was the indication that something new was about to take off. @/queenhuntrixdontmiss and I speculated that it was going to be a new single and low and behold, it was.
But then the live performance got cancelled. It's an open secret that Rumi was having vocal issues, so that was probably not planned. They needed to buy time for her to recover, so, enter the Saja Boys -- a fake band of guys really clearly pretending to be demons, they release ONE single, do a bunch of b-tier variety shows for a week, nearly all of their public appearances have Huntr/x right there, keeping the hype and energy up until Rumi can get her throat polyps removed and furthering the routine where Huntr/x are supposed to be secret demon hunters and the Saja Boys are supposed to be secret demons.
Then the whole thing culminates in the Golden live performance at the idol awards, the big act with Huntr/x fake "break up" and the subsequent theatrics to make it up to fans for failing the first Golden performance. Huntr/x takes their obligation to fans very seriously, I've no doubt that they all felt terrible about having to cancel, so a free show was the obvious recourse to try and make it up to people. And they pulled out all the stops!
But the Saja Boys were never real. I mean they got real guys to pretend to be a boy band and do the dancing and lip syncing obviously, but come on, most of them didn't even have names.