I can't get over how utterly terrified Unjeong looks in this part of episode one
He just saw the girl he thought was a serial killer hours ago get dumped into an illegal dumpsite he came to investigate because one of the dudes dumping the body there complained about everyday.
And now they were trying to convince him it's mannequin.
It's a beautiful 'what the actual fuck' face, I can't believe people call Cha Eun Woo a bad actor. His ability to clearly convey emotions just with his eyes and facial expressions is so good.
I'm really fond of the idea of Unjeong being a platonic yandere for the Trainwreck-Sap-Nightmare trio post canon because it leans into his nickname, Mr. Oddball, and has so much more comedic potential than him being the straight man of the group
The way Unjeong's grief and guilt about not being able to save the Child of Eternity translates to his relationship with Chae-ni and uncertain feelings toward her is so interesting to me.
Here is a boy who gave you kindness and friendship in a scary place where you're constantly hurt and dehumanized, who comforted you even while going through worse at the hands of your captors, who helped you figure out your abilities even at the cost of his safety. Here is a boy whose name you never knew, who you tried to save from the torture he was being put through, who was dead long before you returned to the city that haunted your nightmares in hopes of saving him.
Here is a girl that you found dead in a ditch hours after you first met her, that woke from the dead in a haunting reminder of the friend you failed to save. Here is a girl that seeks you out to help her and her friends control their volatile abilities, that gives you her friendship and trust regardless of how many times you've hurt her and turned here away, that gives you kindness and warmth you haven't experienced in years, that fills your cold, impersonal apartment with personal affects and her weirdly endearing charm. Here is a girl that holds the stolen heart of the friend you failed to save, that you betray in hopes of moving on and closing this haunting chapter of your life, that you realize filled a hole in your heart that you couldn't handle losing again. Here is a girl that dreamed of traveling, being kissed, and living past 30, that pushed through all the physical and emotional barriers shielding your heart and helped you at the cost of her safety and dreams, that wants to save you as much as you once did him.
There's so much overlap between Chae-ni and that boy and I think there's something so hauntingly beautiful about how they sort of become the centre of his lonely world, the beating heart that brought the colour back into his life.
the way the intro for most of the show is colorful until eun chae ni gets captured & then specifically that episode's intro is all grey except for her heart is both chilling & a fascinating choice
his kiss saving her because it makes her heart beat faster so she can go to a safe place and she goes to his apartment - where she didn't even know he'd kept all of her stuffs and now she can get ready to go back to fight - yum yum yum
chae-ni, robin and mr so basically adopting unjeong and inviting themselves into every area of his life like they're all one unit while he has no idea what to do with all of that easy affection and intimacy since he apparently hasn't had a friend since the last one kept being killed in front of him but he still goes along with their shenanigans to help them
i love you misfits, i love you accidental superpowers in the sewage, i love you teaming up together because weird things keep happening & its kinda getting in the way of their problems, i love you reluctant acquaintances to trusted friends, i love you there's no such thing as a nobody,
wonderfools in a nut shell is just the trio doing mr bean-esque skits all day long much to unjeong's dismay, meanwhile palho is in eternal suffering at the hands of a doomsday cult.
I can't help but think it's a little sad that the writers of Wonderfools didn't utilize Koo Jun-mo's (the supporting detective) character as much as they could've because he could've been such a great parallel for the Wunderkinder, particularly his relationship with the grandmother and their relationship with Dr. Ha.
Most of the kids in the orphanage were either abandoned or orphaned and it seems safe to assume that Jun-mo is the latter, as the only familial relationship we see him exhibit is with the grandmother. While he and the other kids who weren't experimented on were rescued, the Wunderkinder were not because Dr. Ha told them to hide and wait for him. After Jun-mo and the Wunderkinder grew up, they found their way back to Haeseong. The difference was that Jun-mo went there of his own volition while the Wunderkinder were taken back there by Dr. Ha.
Jun-mo worked with the grandmother and clearly built some parental/mentor relationship with her despite the fact that her actions had caused him harm because she'd tried to repent for it. The Wunderkinder, on the other hand, act as if they owed Dr. Ha their trust despite everything he had done to them because he was the only one to show them any kind of parental love (as twisted as it was). Jun-mo and the Wunderkinder's loyalty and love for their parental figure is different because the grandmother doesn't take advantage of Jun-mo. She funded his schooling and pays him for his services while Dr. Ha just uses the Wunderkinder, taking advantage of their abilities to escape consequences and accomplish what he wants despite the fact that he knows using their abilities hurts them. He dangles relief and freedom over their heads to keep them underneath.
There's something so genuinely fascinating to me about the scene where Ho-ran (hallucination girl) takes on Jun-mo's appearance and the one thing that gives her away is that Jun-mo always calls the grandmother 'Grandma' (and she calls him a nickname "Gunie', similar to the one she call Chae-ni, which is "Eunie"). The first thing she does is check that he's okay, which is the complete opposite of what Dr. Ha does with the Wunderkinder.
There's also the fact that out of everyone in the room, Ju-ran (brainwashing girl) used Jun-mo to point a gun at the grandmother's head after Dr. Ha, the man she viewed as her father, was indirectly killed due to her actions. The guilt Jun-mo would've felt if he had pulled the trigger would've mirrored her own turmoil.
Just. Jun-mo and Wunderkinder parallels when it comes to their lives and relationships with their parental figures.
My Royal Nemesis said ‘fuck manic pixie dreamgirls, we gonna give you real crazy’ and I love them for it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a weirder FL than Kang Dan-Sim/ Shin Seo-Ri. She’s like a really fucking strange bird. Not like the ‘bit weird but actually really sexy and cute’. But seriously nuts without any vanity that prevents the batshittery from coming out.
Her dowdy outfits that mix toddler with granny chic. Her rage and her freakouts. Her strange walk. Her stage-y performative laugh. Her (mostly misplaced) smugness. Her egocentrism. Her superstitions.
And that’s how you know it’s real love.
A secretly status-conscious chaebol heir falling for what seems to be an unemployed 24/7 method actor who perpetually shows up as a Joseon royal consort, always tries to close weird nonsensical deals, doesn’t know what a credit card is, who has embarrassed him in public numerous times, and will with 99% likelihood absolutely not be an asset to his business which means meant everything to him?
Cha Se-gye couldn’t help the defeated groan that escaped him when his return home was met with sullen silence from Shin Seo-ri. The woman was nothing if not stubborn and her petty rage at his stealing her side dishes hadn’t subsided despite his apologies, half-hearted as they were.
“Are you still pouting? You know I can get you all the side dishes you want,” he sighed, shrugging his coat off and making himself comfortable right next to her on the coach.
She made a face, nose scrunched into her usual expression of haughtiness before she scooched over, putting some space between them before turning her nose up at him.
An odd mixture of annoyance and fondness surged in his chest at the sight. If that was how she wanted to play it…
Se-gye turned on the TV, playing the new Joseon era drama she had acted in. They sat in silence for a few minutes before he moved a little closer, pushing himself more into her personal space. Seo-ri shot him a sharp look, plastering herself against the arm rest. He kept moving closer, fighting to keep his face blank as his antics slowly riled her up. Finally, she had enough.
“Cha Se-gye!” she fumed, breaking her silence to kick at his legs and shove him further away. “Stay on your side of the couch!”
“Oh, but I quite like where I’m sitting,” Se-gye teased, leaning further into her space and throwing an arm around her shoulders. Realizing that she was trapped and how close they were, Seo-ri tried to wiggle free from his grasp but he only had wrap his other hand around her waist to keep her in place
“Unhand me, you degenerate!” she demanded with all the authority of a Joseon queen. But he knew better than to believe that wicked poker face of hers by now — it was just bluster to hide how flustered she was. How flustered he made her. Her reddening ears always gave her away.
“Oh, I’m back to being a degenerate, am I?” Se-gye challenged. “I’ll show you how a degenerate acts, Shin Seo-ri!”
Without warning, he began tickling her, gently digging his fingers into her sides. Seo-ri started, an involuntary shriek escaping her before she started laughing. It was an uncharacteristically high-pitched and girlish sound that he adored hearing.
“He-Hey!” she protested, squirming desperately to escape the tickling sensation. “Cease this mad-madness, you– you—”
“I what?” Se-gye teased as she trailed off, overcome by laughter. A snort escaped her and Se-gye couldn’t help but chuckle, leaning over to kiss a trail down the back of her neck, which only served to further her laughter.
Her face had flushed a deep crimson when he finally stopped and she slumped in his arms, too exhausted and out of breath to further reject his affections. She would’ve slipped away long before if she really didn’t enjoy his company.
“How’s that for degeneracy?” Se-gye asked, eyes glinting with a smugness that he knew infuriated Seo-ri. She bit the arm he had wrapped around her shoulder in retaliation, earning an unmanly yelp for the man as he tried to shake her off. “What are you, a wild beast? Quit biting me!”
Seeing that she stubbornly refused to let go, Se-gye bit her back, sinking his teeth into the crook of her neck. Seo-ri shuddered, abruptly releasing him as she took a sharp intake of breath. Fearing that he might’ve hurt her, Se-gye did the same and she pulled away, covering the bitten area with her hand.
“Are you alright?” he asked, peering at her in worry. “What was that?”
“You simply… took me by surprise,” Seo-ri answered in an uncharacteristically halting manner. She was stiff as a board and wasn’t meeting his gaze, so he’d either hurt her and she wasn’t telling him for whatever reason or…
Se-gye’s gaze flicked to her ears, which were still stained with a deep red flush. A slow smile crept across as the realization dawned on him.
“Let me see,” he offered gently, pulling her hand away to inspect the bite mark. It was hardly visible, with small reddened indents where his teeth had poked her skin — nothing compared to the angry red spot she had left on his arm. “It doesn’t seem too bad. Does it hurt?”
“No, you haven’t caused me any harm.”
“Tell me, then, does this hurt?” he asked in a dangerously soft tone and it was all the warning she got before he bit her once more. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, barely more than a nibble, but she shuddered once more, exhaling sharply.
Took her by surprise, his foot.
She was into this. Shin Seo-ri was into biting.
“You— This isn’t—” she sputtered in protest but the way she was melting into him, making no effort to pull away, gave away her true feelings. “This is improper,” she whispered, her breath hitching as he bit a little harder.
“Improper?” he murmured against her skin, pressing a kiss to the bitten area. “I told you, didn’t I? When there’s no one here but us, Shin Seo-ri, we can be as immature and improper as we want,”
All further protests died at her lips as he pulled her closer, gently grazing her neck with teeth before catching her earlobe between them and biting. The sound she made was electrifying – a low, cut-off whimper he’d never heard before.
He wanted to hear it again, to coax all kinds of sounds from her.
All thoughts slipped from Se-gye’s mind as the air grew thick with heated tension, time slipping by in a blur of rough, intimate biting and desperate kissing. His Seo-ri certainly hadn’t been shy herself, emboldened by desire, and the tender bite marks she’d left on his neck and shoulder showed that.
“Shin Seo-ri,” he whispered hoarsely as he broke away from their kiss. Her eyes were dark with hunger and impatience, annoyed that he dared to interrupt the moment. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold myself back if we don’t stop now.”
Seo-ri’s eyes flashed, first with understanding, then with fondness. There was something deeply enchanting about the intensity in her eyes as she reached, cupping his face with her hand. “And who told you to hold yourself back, Cha Se-gye?”
He didn’t need to be told twice. After all, there was nothing he hated more than wasting time.
