i have many thoughts on lee gilyoung and kim dokja but i fear i may explode if i try to articulate them fully
there is something to be said in the way kdj and orv as a whole really tends to sidestep lgy. like kdj cares about lgy of course. and orv obviously wants us to care about lgy or else they would have killed him off for shock value or fridged him way earlier than they did or something. and yet he remains in the main story but still on the sidelines
i think there is something very sad to be said about how kdj very openly tends to love on/lavish attention onto sys and like consciously acknowledge that she is, in many ways, his daughter, yet doesnt really do the same for lgy. there is something very sad to be said about the way kdj tends to refer to sys individually, but only to lgy in the collective "kids." there is something very sad in the way kdj saw himself in lgy the first time he saw him on the subway and saw him both as a boy to be saved and a tool to be used and i dont think their relationship ever really recovered from this.
like he cares about them because he doesnt want to be a shitty father-figure but hes a shitty father-figure because he cares. and while sys is saved from the brunt of this to a degree because shes a character so he can just mimic how yjh treats her in worldlines where she's saved and get by on that, lgy doesnt have that kind of support. lgy is not a fictional wunderkid or pitiable, fragile little girl (however true or false that assessment of sys is). hes a snot nosed foul mouthed violent boy obsessed with bugs and death and kdj, i think, knows he ought to care for him but he doesnt know how and doesnt bother to learn and that, i believe, the not-bothering that is, is what truly incriminates him as a shitbag father. hes afraid so he doesnt try and lgy spends 90% of orv being terrified kdj secretly hates him and the worst part is hes almost right
Chay goes with Kim to a show to support him, but bangs his head (/reads Kim’s cursed fanmail, the details are not important 🤣) right after Kim goes on stage and ends up with memory loss. From his perspective he woke up backstage of a wik concert so he’s convinced he’s having a weird dream
Kim finishes the show and high off of stage energy ravishes Chay backstage, confused yet delighted by Chay role playing a fan
Then after Kim is like “good times, ready to head back to our apartment?”
And Chay goes “what”
Is it silly? Is it angsty? Probably both! The possibilities are endless!
So I was thinking about kim (nothing new there), but fledgling Kim trying to leave the compound, and his father gives him an option. He’s allowed to move out, his father has a place that’s near his school and his studio, that has staff who will see to all his needs.
The catch - it’s an elderly assisted living home. His father offers it basically dangling a carrot on a stick and assumes Kim won’t take the bait and continue living at home. But Kim is like fuck it, anything to get outta here. It’s not like I’ll have to interact with anyone else in the building.
What he doesn’t expect is that the other residents of his building are old people who focused on their careers instead of family and so have no visitors, or old people who’s children are focused on their careers instead of family and so also have no visitors. There are like 200 wannabe-grandparents in the building with no one to spoil and fuss over.
And Kim is finally living on his own and loving it, and he’s pretty good at dodging his elderly neighbors, but there’s a grand piano in the lobby that one of the residents plays everyday. One day Kim is walking through the lobby to get to his special penthouse elevator when he hears a Sinatra cover and gets distracted listening. That’s when the first grandpa pounces and when he’s done playing the song he chats very casually with Kim about music and asks Kim if he has a request. He can play any song Kim can think of made before the 80s by memory.
Kim mentions a song his mother used to play for him, and offhandedly mentions she’s dead, and that’s what really opens the floodgates. Piano-grandpa goes to all his other friends and rallies them, and from then on Kim knows no peace. One grandma keeps making him cookies (he suspects they’re poisoned, why else would she insist) while another grandpa leaves him healthy home cooked meals at his door. One day he leaves the apartment only to be assaulted by a tiny tiny woman with a measuring tape, then two weeks later she returns again with the softest home knit sweater.
He thinks this is all pretty weird and rather annoying and probably they’re on his father’s payroll to be nice to him… but also he’s sixteen and no one has really fussed over him since he was little and his mom was around.
So when he discovers the grandma who always checks if he has an umbrella when it’s raining is getting extorted by her niece, he takes care of it quietly. And when train-facts grandpa and strawberry-jam grandma both complain about the new nurse being too rough, he takes care of it loudly.
So by the time he’s 22 and could actually move out to his own place, he doesn’t want to because he has 200 grandparents taking care of him where he currently lives.
When he brings Chay around all the grandparents adore him. Chay finds Kim’s living situation delightfully odd, but everything about Kim is delightfully odd so it makes more sense than it doesn’t. It’s photography grandpa who slips Chay the instant camera and tells them to have fun.
And when Chay stops coming around half of the old folks shower him in extra love because he’a obviously heartbroken and half of them want to whip his ass for being an idiot and coach him how to win Chay back.
Anyway, just thinking about Kim with mettlesome and well meaning grandparents
i want to do a queer reading of the green knight 2021 so bad
like im talking out of my ass here but like gawains character sees a lot of overlap in the ways queer men (esp feminine queer men) tend to grapple with their place within the hegemony—he finds himself engaging with the challenge issued by the green knight because he wants to prove himself as a knight after all, or in essence, as someone worthy of the ultimate ideals of masculinity
yet we see in his relationships that he does not seem to fit into that ideal. essel, his lover from the brothel, exhibits a degree of maleness in that her lifestyle/profession/whatever have you gives her much the same sexual freedoms upper-class men of the period were often allowed: she sleeps with whomever she chooses whenever she chooses, and one will note that she has short, almost boyishly cropped hair as opposed to the long winding braids and updos common to women of the period. when gawain spends time with her in the brothel (a place of sexual freedom) he is more at ease with himself than he appears to be in nearly every other instance in the film save perhaps the final scene (ill get to that)
so we already have established that hes more comfortable existing outside of the ideals put forth by the vaguely medieval christian system arthur/guenevere represent, but we see the signs of his active DISCOMFORT within the system in his dream/vision in the green chapel. he sleeps with essel once more after his return to camelot and becomes king, but instead of staying with her more permanently he leaves her behind and takes their son with him—as if punishing both her and himself for daring to want outside the mandate the class based heteronormativity would have him perform
and this is undoubtedly a punishment for the both of them because gawain goes on to live a wretched empty life (he marries a stranger he rarely spends time with her his son dies young in war his people revolt and he dies alone) and essel stands in the crowd watching him disdainfully, tense with a barely concealed fury at the life he stole from both of them
of course this kind of subliminal queerness is second to the real moment of faggotry in the film—bertalik kissing gawain. the key marker of queerness in the scene however, is less in the kiss itself and more in gawains reaction to it. he could have simply pulled away upon contact but instead he lingers. bertalik is the one who ends the kiss and they hold eye contact for a beat before gawain asks him to let him go. why did he not push him away at first then? it could have been shock in the moment of course, but he holds bertaliks hand even as he asks to be released. i would argue that it is a fear of desire within himself that spurs him to spurn bertalik rather than a revulsion at the thought of contact
now returning to the final scene as i mentioned earlier: all this in mind the only other moment of the film in which gawain seems at peace/content is when the green knight moves to behead him for the third time. the knight bows low and smiles, running a hand along gawains neck, and the film closes on the two smiling. for this scene of gentleness between two men, one who has shown predominantly fear and apprehension throughout the work and the other a grim, leashed violence, to be the closing note of the film is an interesting choice to say the least. the green knight at least in part represents a rejection of the reserved, dour conservative views of arthur and the rest of the ruling class. he represents a kind of freedom in body and spirit that encroaching christianity in the british isles sought to quash, so what then would it say of gawain that he feels more at ease kneeling before this wild untamed anti-society if you will than he did sitting in the lap of chaste, christian luxury? that he was more at home surrounded by loose, immoral sexual deviants than he was in the arms of the his home and family? that he feared bertaliks touch but almost, so it seems, didnt want it to stop?
what im trying to say is the green knight symbomizes gay love and being lowkey embraced by and/or beheaded by him represents gawains full surrender to faggotry and life outside the boundaries his family would have him live by
Everyone has a timer in their wrist that shows how many days your soulmate has left to live
For Chay the timer changes every day but the number of days is never more than one year. Chay is very, very concerned for his soulmate and the kind of life he is living.
For Kim, he's convinced that his soulmate is also part of the Mafia or something worse because his timer is just weird. This morning his soulmate had over 50 years left, but something happened between 9am and 9:25am so now his soulmate is gonna die by the end of the week! Then, before lunch his timer changes again and Kim's soulmate will live for another 89 years
How do you think Kim would react to Chay? Just normal, kind, brave, zero situational awareness Chay who hasn't realized how many times he's been about to die
Also Helloo Hiiii how are you?
Hiiiiii, Hellooooo, I'm doing okay other than all this writer's block haha. Onto the timer soulmates!!
Kim wakes up in unfamiliar territory and nearly jolts up before he realizes the uncomfortable feeling below him is a pullout couch and the comforting weight on top of him is Chay.
His maybe-probably soulmate.
Warmth spreads across his cheeks when he realizes they spent all night pressed up against each other like this. Trying not to jostle Chay, Kim checks his watch. The time, 7:00AM, is expected for his internal body clock. Then he pulls down the wristband on his watch and checks his timer, 20:05:03:23:15, which is not expected.
Twenty years? When he fell asleep last night, the boy in his arms had fifty some odd years left to live, and this morning it’s down to twenty?
The timer changes sometimes, everyone’s does. The mechanics are still a bit of a mystery to the world, but it’s a guarantee that when a timer runs out, that person’s soulmate dies. It seems like Kim’s timer fluctuates more than other people’s, but Chay hadn’t led the safest life even before he started hanging out with the third son of Thailand’s biggest mafia family.
Actually, when Kim suspected Chay’s magnetic pull was more than just a simple crush on Kim’s part, he made a phone call ensuring all the Kittisawat debts were paid off and any loan sharks in the area knew Chay was protected.
On that day Kim’s timer jumped from a worrisome ten years to a more comfortable fifty.
That would have been more than enough for most people to prove they were soulmates, but Kim maintains a healthy amount of doubt. Or denial rather.
He doesn’t want Chay tied to him. His little intervention took a whole week of planning to make the orders look like they were coming from someone other than Kim. He doesn’t want his family finding out Chay is important, it’s too dangerous for Chay to get involved with them. This morning is proof of it, their deepening relationship is taking decades off of Chay’s life.
The boy in his arms begins to stir, and then stills suddenly. The corner’s of Kim’s lips twitch up when he feels Chay’s breaths quicken as he likely realizes he’s sleeping half on top of Kim, and then forcibly slow down again.
“Why are you pretending to be asleep?” Kim finds himself asking. He hadn’t even planned to break their peaceful silence, but he’s a little obsessed with Chay and desperate to understand what goes on in his mind.
Chay answer about barely believing any of this is real is like a knife to Kim’s heart, because it’s not. Kim is hiding so many things from him. He hasn’t even mentioned to Chay his thought that they might be soulmates, and that’s the least of the things Kim is keeping from him.
Chay unknowingly twists that knife when he looks up at Kim with his big, lovely eyes and asks Kim if he loves Chay. He’s never looked at the timer on Chay’s timer, but he thinks it probably just lost a decade of time.
He doesn’t respond to Chay’s question, instead sending him off to fetch breakfast for them.
Kim should leave, he tells himself as Chay cooks. He should leave and never return. It’s better to know Chay is out in the world without him, than have to live in a world where Chay is dead because Kim was greedy with him.
When the doorbell rings, Kim makes his decision. He’ll slip out while Chay isn’t looking, and never come near him again.
Then he hears Chay scream, and walking away isn’t an option.
He fights tooth and nail, but he let his guard down too much and he’s not prepared to fight. Chay’s cries have made him frantic and erratic, and he knows he’s leaving holes in his defenses. Just as he’s starting to get his fighting brain turned on he gets tazed. It hurts like a bitch but he keeps going, fighting back as he gets tazed again.
He goes down. The last thing he sees is Chay helplessly splayed on the ground.
When he wakes up Chay is gone.
Kim’s timer reads 00:00:05:08:15.
Five days.
If Kim does nothing, Chay will die in five days.
He won’t let his happen.
He picks up the phone and dials the number he swore he’d never call for help again.
Kim watches the seconds tick away on his timer with as the call rings.
“Kim?” Kinn asks curtly when he picks up.
Kim takes a deep breath. “I need help,” he utters.
Ella Enchanted AU where Kim has to do whatever he's told to do :)
OH SHIRLEY I LOVE YOU. Ella Enchanted MY BELOVED.
So. I think Kim would Not Respond Well to being compelled to do whatever he's told. And by that I mean there are two Theerapanyakul recluse brothers in this story.
Kim hides away from everyone except his brothers. He's practically considered a ghost, most people who work in the compound think he's a ghost, the other half doesn't think he exists at all. Before his mother died, she told him not to tell anyone of his obedience affliction for fear it would be exploited.
It gets exploited anyway by Korn. His father commands him with a smile and a soft word and sends Kim on dangerous missions he's literally not allowed to refuse. Kim tries to hide from him, but then his father told him he wasn't allowed to avoid him. The best thing he can do is just try and avoid everyone else.
His brothers are the exception. They always try and make sure that they're asking him to do things, and if they accidentally give him a command Kim can yell at them and they'll change the command into a suggestion.
His only refuge is his music. He adopts the persona of WIK and releases his music on YouTube, but he never takes WIK beyond the four walls of his room. He can't even IMAGINE being a celebrity out in public. Fans scream the most ridiculous things, and even a single "wik, have my babies!" would ruin him. Thank goodness he doesn't have to obey the comments he sees written on his videos.
One day a new bodyguard starts, and Kim avoids him like the rest. But then the new bodyguard lures Tankhun out of the tower, and Kim is delighted for his brother and also kinda jealous and grumpy.
Then one day, a kid is allowed to just wander the compound and accidentally finds his way up to KIm's rooms. Kim doesn't have time to get his soundproof headphones or kick the kid out before he's flailing and saying, "hecking shit, I didn't know you lived here Wik, please be my guitar tutor!"
Which is a command, and Kim is really disgruntled by that, but he can't not obey.
So he tutors the kid, Chay, and he tries to keep it as short as possible, but then Chay tells him to stop and listen to his song. So Kim has to do that then. But then... Kim really shouldn't be spending time with this fan, but...but his music is lovely. And Kim isn't going to admit it anytime soon... but he might be lonely.
And Chay's not dumb, he realizes Kim's a shut in, or there's something clearly wrong with him. Sometimes Chay can't find him, and then when he reappears he's extra grouchy. Sometimes he's hurt. But he also seems happy to hang out with Chay. And when Chay suggests they go out into the world, Kim agrees! (because "please, P'Kim, let's go to the movies" is technically a command.)
But Kim is finding he doesn't mind being ordered around by Chay. He should probably avoid Chay, it's risky going out into the world, especially in public with other people and without someone who knows about his afflection. But oh no, it's the curse, he can't help but spend time with this cute boy.
But Korn takes notice that Kim has been distracted recently. He commands Kim to tell Chay he was just playing with him and that he never wants to see Chay again. Kim screams at his father, and is commanded to speak politely. He tries to attack Korn and is commanded to never let Korn come to harm. Kim tries to destroy his father's office but is commanded to stop throwing a tantrum and respect his father.
Kim has no choice but to obey.
He leaves Chay like he does in canon, walking away while Chay is on the ground crying.
He thinks that's it. Kim locks himself away again, not opening the door for the staff or his brothers or anyone. The only one who can get in his Korn, and that's because Kim is forced to pay him his respects.
But then he gives Kim another command: A coup is happening soon. Find Chay, bring him as leverage.
Kim dreads this and resists as much as he can, but he's compelled to go. He finds Chay at hum bar. The only thing is, he also finds his uncle's men there. Part of brining Chay to his father means keeping Chay alive, right? So he fights off his uncle's men.
In this version Chay turns around and sees Kim fighting for him. After Kim wins, Chay throws himself into Kim's arms, which is a blessing and a curse because he gets to be close to Chay but also he's one step closer to bringing him to Korn.
Kim draws out the conversation as long as he can.
Chay: You kept me safe?
Kim: I wanted to.
Chay: You broke my heart though
Kim: I had no other choice.
But eventually the curse fights him and he slowly brings Chay back to the compound, trying to delay at every moment. Chay can tell something is wrong, Kim is physically fighting for something, but he doesn't understand what.
Kim brings Chay to Korn before Porsche and Kinn get there. His father has a different plan now, keep Chay locked up with his mother. It's leverage over both Porsche AND Kim.
Kim refuses to help. He's not going to let that happen, not under his watch. He's not allowed to resist though, and he feels like his body is going to tear itself apart. Chay holds him tight as Korn keeps giving orders and Kim screams and shakes and falls apart and builds himself anew.
His determination and Chay's help break the curse. Finally, Kim rises, shakey on his feet but whole again.
Korn: Don't hurt me Kim. You cannot hurt me.
Kim: I do what I want
And then he kills Korn.
After that he and Chay have a lot to talk through, but it's much easier now that Kim's lips aren't magically sealed.
(send me a trope, maybe one you hate, and I'll attempt to kimchay it)
