I love love love how well written Lee Sookyoung's character is specifically for a mother or parental figure. She is the protag's mother and things she did in life do center around that role but when she's near death and her 'thema' needs to be treated, Kim Dokja isn't enough. His role as her son doesn't make him automatically qualified to fix her thema. Reducing women, especially mothers or mother figures, to their role as protectors or ploys to further the narrative of the protag isn't uncommon, despite it being a cop out. It's something very many well-written media resort to and I certainly wouldn't have questioned if ORV pulled a 'despite their broken relationship, Kim Dokja knew his mother's soul' because at this point the story has shown me so much of his suffering as a son and LSY's regrets as a mother that I'm rooting for a storyline like that. But ORV doesn't do that. Instead it is fair to Lee Sookyoung, doesn't reduce her to a plot point in Kim Dokja's story, and instead gives her the multidimensionality she very much deserves by making her prison friends and even HSY a part of her salvation. She left KDJ and lived part of her story with people unknown to him and simply regretting and reconnecting isn't going to undo all that. KDJ left the Star Stream and then went to the 1863rd round leaving LSY with HSY and YSA and KDJ has no stake in the connections Kimcom made with each other during that time just because he's back now.
LSY and all ORV women are multidimensional and it's so beautiful to me that it makes me cry
