I cannot get over how misleading the description of this show was compared to its actual execution of the first two episodes. This will be pretty spoiler-free if you are reading to decide whether to give the show a try!
The summary: "Twenty-nine-year-old Tae Myung Ha experiences a bewildering twist of fate when suddenly finds himself transported into a fictional online game where he inhabits the body of a ninteen-year-old character. Soon, Tae Myung Ha embarks on a quest within the virtual world to bring happiness to a character named Cha Yeo Woon. Despite his humble upbringing, Cha Yeo Woon has managed to excel in the national track and field championships, maintaining a remarkable reputation among his peers due to his handsome looks and athletic physique."
What I had taken away from that description that had made me wary: The importance of the age gap; lying to a character to fake affection in order to win a game.
None of the original description is a lie, but the emphasis is all wrong and it excludes some key details that make this show so good.
First: The character MyungHa is tasked to make happy is not just any character; he's the character in a novel MyungHa has just read, and he's the character that he says he identified with most (and who he was rooting for and was annnoyed got a sad storyline and ending). So when he's going up to YeoWoon expressing affection, it's genuine. He really does already know and like this guy. That's a HUGE difference for me, and it changes his mission from a Big Lie into a personal mission. The thing I like most about this show is the heart. The fact that MyungHa genuinely wanting YeoWoon to be happy is (it seems) the triggering event that transports him into the game, not a bewildering twist of fate but a direct response to his articulated wish, is a key part of that heart!
Second: Myung Ha is not out here as a 19-year-old trying to seduce YeoWoon, he wants him to be happy because he sees in YeoWoon similarities to who he was in his teens. The thing that has MyungHa most excited about being 19 again is his grandmother still being alive. The age gap is only a thing in how MyungHa is treating YeoWoon like he's a little kid, which annoys the hell out of YeoWoon because his character is only 1 year older.
Finally: YeoWoon has no friends. It seems true that he's famous on campus and that he has fans (e.g. KyungHoon's sister) but they don't approach him and it doesn't prevent people from hating him. This description makes him sound like a popular guy.
The description on MDL also includes this paragraph: "Cheon Sang Won hails from an affluent family and becomes emotionally entangled with Tae Myung Ha. His involvement adds complexity to the developing relationship between Tae Myung Ha and Cha Yeo Woon. Ahn Kyung Hoon, introverted and reserved, supports and assists Tae Myung Ha on his mission within the virtual world."
We haven't enough of SangWon to draw conclusions yet, but based on the failures of the original description to capture any of the the things I love about the show while highlighting issues that don't (to date) actually exist in the show, I'm going to reserve judgment and assume this is also misleading. It would be pretty antithetical to the very heart of the show that's being set up if Myung Ha, through his actions, caused a different character (SangWon) to become the sad second lead. I'll be really interested to see how this goes and how/if this show will address this issue.
TL;DR: The marketing material: Age gap romance with a Big Lie The actual show: video game isekai granting an earnest protagonist a chance to create a fix-it AU for his favourite sad side character.
Anyway. Glad the show turned out to be so off from the marketing material because this is way better!
“When I’m working on a project, I sometimes think, ‘This is my last project.’ It’s not a job with a guaranteed future. I can fix it in the next work. Also, as a creator, it’s really hard to get praise from someone, but I’m grateful to be supported by many people while working on a BL genre project.“
“There were times when the audience who saw the works left their impressions that I felt my own emotions. Hearing those words is comforting. I’ve always thought of myself as an ordinary and colorless person. When I hear those words, I can’t put it into words clearly, but it makes me think, ‘There is something that represents me.’”
“I think the fact that the fans of the work have steadily grown the game played a big role. Because there is someone’s support and support, other people also get interested. The BL genre may have a sensitive part, but rather than narrowing it down to a specific genre, it is a ‘love story’. ’ It’s easier if you look at it broadly and define just that a man loves a man, because you can write the romance you want to write.“
- Hwang Da Seul; Director of K-BL’s Where Your Eyes Linger (2020), To My Star (2021), Blueming (2022)
hello besties if the tags are broken for you don't forget you can try the transparent line thing it's been working for me and whatever fit tumblr is throwing today xoxo
note: this does not work if you've also been sent to horny jail and the posts aren't even showing up on your own dash
"what use is it to be an illustrator of children's books when the world has sentenced the children of your country to the death penalty, to vanish, to genocide?"
some of baraa's illustrations:
this is an illustration for youssef, whose mother is remembered running desperately into the hospital asking if anyone had seen a "small white boy with beautiful curly hair, his name is youssef," a description which was remembered by millions when she finally identified his body:
this illustration is for young omar, who was hugging his little brother and teaching him how to repeat the shahada after him (a prayer spoken by muslims before their death) as he lay on his hospital bed:
"we want a new year that doesn't kill us or our children, we want it a year without blood, without screaming, without pain, we want a new attempt to get our lives back, or something that resembled our life, even if life is a lie we still cling to it, return life to us—a new year's card unlike any other year:"
baraa is currently fundraising to get her family of 12 out of gaza. she is a friend of mine and this is a reputable fundraiser, so please donate if you can. the egyptian government is currently charging upwards of 5,000 USD per person to get to cairo through the rafah border:
I urgently reach out to you in a time of crisis. My family, consisting of twelve… Baraa Awoor needs your support for Help Artist Baraa and
#don’t treat fictional characters like they’re real people whose rights you need to defend#and absolutely DO NOT treat real people like they’re just characters for you to get weird about
Doppelgängers as a Means of Visualizing Queer Subtext in The Worst of Evil
Since I keep seeing posts cropping up asking, to paraphrase it mildly, what the ending of The Worst of Evil signifies or how to classify the relationships between the characters or why this or that happened in the show, or why the characters behaved "stupid", “strangely” or “not gay enough” I felt compelled to, as the proverb says, add my two cents to the discussion. Usually I don't have time to write and post analytical stuff, but as it happens, I have some time on my hands right now and despite what a lot of other people are saying, I deeply appreciate the symbolism found in the show. I hope my interpretation of things will shed some light on the questions I have seen floating around.
User yu-xiu has a really good post saying that we cannot watch The Worst of Evil through the lens of typical Kdrama and that it was one of the reasons expectations were crushed (I tried finding the post, but couldn't any longer. If you happen to read this, feel free to send it to me so I can include it). I totally agree with that assessment for several reasons. First it should be said that The Worst of Evil is not BL and was never advertised as such. Second, the typical hallmarks found in many Kdramas are missing. There is, for instance, no spoken inner monologue to voice a character’s feelings. Furthermore it can be argued that the dialogue is written in such a way that it very seldom explains the plot to the audience and overall nothing is handed to the viewer on a silver platter via heavy exposition. What we see instead is the employment of visual cues to provide characterisation on the one hand and on the other, a framework for its thematic examination of its characters. The fact that the show never provides any inner monologue is already indicative of the way it constructs the characters’ perception of themselves within the confinements of the setting. While I enjoy many of the classic tropes we find in Kdramas, I think we still need to keep in mind that a TV show is by no means a documentary. A fictional narrative is not supposed to explain the plot, character motivation or any underlying themes to its audience. A TV show is supposed to show a story and we as the audience are expected to use our ability to critically assess and form our own opinions on the product we are consuming. It is unavoidable that we read between the lines and hone that ability as we grow older, wiser and more mature.
I seem to recall seeing posts claiming that the show was not gay enough. But what do these statements even try to criticize? A lack of explicit scenes? A lack of outright confessions? A lack of expository dialogue? My view, contrary to what some argue, is that the show offers plenty of “gay” text and that it in fact permeates the entire plot. But it is imperative that we examine the text to also uncover the queer subtext, which is by far more interesting than plain text. Foucault (27) rightfully says, “there is no binary division to be made between what one says and what does not say;…There is not one but many silences and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourse”.
Many seem to overlook the very important cultural points that for one, the show is taking place in an era (the 90s) where queerness was still often met with ostracization in the best case, and in the worst case, criminal charges, on top of being seen as harmful and obscene. Second, it is set in South Korea, a Confucian influenced country that is struggling with accepting the queer community to this day. I am claiming that taking these cultural differences into account and the fact that, according to the interviews, everyone on set worked diligently to create the show, The Worst of Evil offers an interesting exploration of unfulfilled queer desire. However, it remains an unfulfilled desire, due to the nature of the setting of the story and thus hinges on its subtext - which does in no way mean its significance should be disregarded. Moreover, to visualize Junmo’s and Gicheul’s conflicting desires between their queer desire and their desire to remain socially respected, the show relies on the use of the doppelgänger motif.
Before we dive into the nitty gritty of the aforementioned queer plot, we have to get familiar with the two literary terms doppelgänger and queer desire. Both of them are relatively easy to understand and are often intertwined in queer literature for the simple reason that the use of a doppelgänger serves as a reveal to a person’s secret and sometimes even shameful desires, especially when that character is male.
Queer desire as the word suggests describes a desire for relationships that are outside the heteronormative matrix: “Sexual desire inevitably plays a significant role, especially for people who identify as queer or non- (hetero) normative, where the desiring of, or for, individuals can be ascribed as marginalized or excluded from a "normal majority" by the majority itself. People can barely avoid thinking of the way they love and how they experience their sexuality, when their position within society is defined (not only conceptually) by their "sexual orientation”” (“https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/q/queer-desire.html”). Summed up, it does not matter whether the desire means a gay or sapphic desire or a desire for a polyamorous relationship or monogamous relationships other than between male and female affirming person as long as it is situated outside the sexual majority.
A doppelgänger is the twin, the lookalike, the alter ego or foil to a character. As mentioned above, it serves as a device to lay bare a character's desires or their other hidden self and has been used for centuries to support readings of “forbidden male-male desire, and, moreover, the significance and overwhelming presence of troubled masculine homosociality and homoerotic tension” (Sencindiver 37). Black Swan perhaps serves as an outlier for its female-female desire. In The Worst of Evil we can certainly find the former. It is a leitmotif running through the show from the very beginning to the very end. The significance of these terms should already shed some light on the character’s apparently strange and stupid motivations. While there is never any explicit affirmation of a character’s queer, gay, bi, etc. sexuality, the use of doppelgängers implicitly indicates exactly that.
In the show the concept of doppelgänger is best illustrated in episode 9 after the attack on Gangnam Union.
The screenshot above shows Junmo and Haeryeon on one side and Gicheul and Euijong on the other. In a later episode (12) Jungbae says, "They’ve coupled up like that." While he is right on one level, he fails to decipher the connection between these characters on a more subtle, queer one. They are not only coupled up, but also serve as a prism to each other of who they are - cop/gangster, good/ evil - what they want and what they cannot be or have -a life of “crime”/a normal life. They are each other's doppelgängers.
As the main characters, this is especially prominent with regards to Junmo and Gicheul. Over the course of the show the similarities between them are steadily uncovered and range from wearing similar outfits to behaving in a similar fashion. Additionally, both men outwardly desire the same things – respect, power and the same woman. Due to her upbringing into a family of high ranking police officers Euijong symbolizes not only these very things such as respect and power, but also a prestigious heteronormative lifestyle, which is accompanied by those achievements (“Episode 1”). Despite the depiction of those obvious respectable desires, they both continuously conceal or even try to deny their true, less respectable, desires.
Perhaps some have noticed that the word crime is put in quotation marks in an earlier sentence. It was done with complete intention. ‘Life of crime’ is emblematic of queer desire. Secindiver (38) perfectly sums it up as, “The criminalization of homosexual behavior necessitates its attendant secrecy; accordingly, in fin de siècle doppelgänger tales, we also witness how secrecy on the whole repeatedly subsumes the buried secrecy of sexuality… For most middle-class inhabitants of this world [the Victorian world], homosexuality represented a double life, in which a respectable day-time world often involving marriage and family, existed alongside a night world of homoeroticism.” Even though she mainly talks about Victorian literature, the same principles can be applied to contemporary media. This does not indicate that the female characters are erased as is so often the case as Secindiver writes (37). They have desires and character development on their own, but contrary to Junmo and Gicheul, it is not necessarily tied to the concept of queer desire. However, their existence can certainly embody the normativity/queer, day/night, cop/criminal dichotomy present in Junmo’s and Gicheul’s relationship. If every character serves as a doppelgänger to another character, we can thus conclude that they represent each other’s deep seated desires and that in the male character’s cases, those desires are in fact queer-coded.
As mentioned above, on the spectrum of spoken and unspoken desires, the characters themselves do not struggle with a vocalization of a desire. However, as established, not every desire is explicitly stated. Rather the expressed desires may be tied to concepts or ideologies the characters have internalized or may hide another truth to achieve the concealment through double layering. If these so called heteronormative ideologies pertain to the societal majority – a person should seek the life of an upstanding citizen and that respect is given to those who live a heteronormative, law-abiding life – then it should come as no surprise that the characters try to escape a life or crime or try to conceal their desire for a life of crime from those around them.
The screenshots below represent those spoken and unspoken desires.
In these scenes, the desire to leave the life of crime and live a normal life are made startlingly clear.
For Haeryeon living a normal life l means ridding herself of her second Chinese identity, therefore a life of crime, in order to be allowed to live in Korea and study, work and date there (“Episode 9”).
For Gicheul a normal life means ridding himself of his gangster identity so he can become an upstanding citizen and entrepreneur married to his high school sweetheart. Perhaps it even means going back to the righteous path and re-entering the Christian community – an analysis that deserves its own space.
Admittedly, Euijong is the character where those desires are harder to grasp either due to poor writing, scenes being cut out of the final product or acting abilities. That said, even Euijong is shown to express desires that would mean ridding herself of a persona. In her case, the cop persona. While her feelings for Gicheul might appear murky, we can deduce from her wish to save Gicheul, the fact that she cradles his body as he is dying (“Episode 12"), that she kisses him in the car (“Episode 8”) and finally leaves her necklace at his grave (“Episode 12”), that she still harbores feelings of love for him.
As the pivotal character of the show, Junmo's desires are the easiest to uncover. In the very beginning those desires are portrayed as wanting to establish his identity by being his wife's equal and earning the respect of her family (“Episode 1”). As the show progresses these desires change into wanting to establish his identity as Gicheul’s second in command and escaping the heteronormative life he has previously lived.
In the screenshot, which precedes the mirror scene, and which shows the aftermath of him arriving at Gangam Union and slaughtering his way into Gicheul’s office where Gicheul and his wife await him, is asked why he goes to such lengths.^^ Junmo claims that he wants to protect someone (“Episode 9”). It is of importance to keep in mind that before he set out to Gangam Union’s headquarters, Jungmo was not aware of Euijong’s presence. His initial goal was to aid and protect Gicheul. This scene is followed by the mirror scene in which Haeryeun – arguably the character with the most awareness of her desires– looks between Gicheul and Euijong in order to uncover who exactly Junmo is referring to. The editing of the scene never provides an answer and so the conflict remains, along with the knowledge that Junmo not only actively committed murder, but also enjoyed it.
His conflict culminates in Junmo allowing Haeryeon and Gicheul to escape incarceration (“Episode 12”). It is in an act that is symbolic of Junmo accepting his secret desires, yet knowing societal conventions do not allow him to pursue them. Euijon and especially Junmo are put in opposition to Haeryeon and Gicheul. By contrasting these characters with each other, the show illustrates not only the interplay between unhidden and hidden queer desires, but also why those contrasting desires either make the pursuit of a normal life futile to begin with or have to remain unfulfilled.
I explicitly use the term queer desire, because these unfulfilled desires are connected to the idea of heteronormativity as the status quo that should be desired. As the show progresses the conflicting desires between knowing one should want the socially acceptable heteronormativity and the desire for what is considered socially unconventional are steadily uncovered. Eventually the characters who had lived a normal life - Junmo and Euijong- end up unhappy and unable to return to a life of normalcy (“Episode 12”).
As I mentioned, I have seen comments claiming the show gave a promise but failed to make good on its promise. I have to disagree considering that especially Junmo and Gicheul as each other's doppelgängers are depicted as representing the conflict between desires.
In episode 7 Haeryeon is telling Seungho that he has to decide between his heart and his head when it comes to business. In all of these figures we see either Gicheul or Junmo are driven by their heart, instead of their head and act out of loyalty, companionship or love, even as they are actively trying to conceal these notions from themselves and others throughout the show. Junmo himself even says that his body follows his heart when it comes to Gicheul.
Haeryeon inhabits an interesting role in the show. At times a doppelgänger to either Junmo or/and Gicheul, she is characterized by her refusal to be anything but herself and gains Junmo’s platonic affection. Many scenes featuring her and Junmo are influenced by her sharp observation skills and her understanding of human nature, which in turn cause the characters to reveal a truth about themselves. In this particular scene, she comments on the romantic nature of Junmo’s attitude. He asks her in return if his attitude is a bad thing. She replies, “No, it’s not bad. I just find it interesting. It’s unusual.” Unfiltered, or unafraid, Haeryeon provides her own opinion on Junmo’s feelings while noting the strangeness of these feelings at the same time. Although she does not condemn him, she reminds him and the viewer of societal expectations.
“In the discourse of queer visibility, the closet acts both as a screening surface and filtering device. The cultural logic that underpins the metaphor of the closet plays out as a screening process of various types: the closet acts like a screen upon which visions of queerness are projected even as it simultaneously screens out other facets of queerness” (Kohnen 12). While The Worst of Evil remains on the surface of cultural commentary, it nevertheless engages in those projected visions of queerness Kohnen talks about.
The characters themselves are at times aware of their conflict and thus continuously wrestle with the attempt to discard their secret identity, or at the very least, make themselves appear as morally upstanding citizens. Gicheul reconnecting with Euijong is the epitome of that endeavor. It is an effort to conceal the queer desires from himself as well as those around him. It bears repeating that the show’s plot is set in a highly conservative country during a highly conservative time period. The presenting and overt showing of queer desires are considered strange, morally wrong, harmful, undesirable and every other negative connotation associated with it. And yet, Gicheul is introduced as slipping further into a life of crime and rising to the leader of a local gang after a hostile takeover. A life, I should say, in which he is surrounded by his exclusively male friends he feels extremely close to and is willing to kill for (“Episode 1”).
It should not go unignored that the very reason Gicheul chooses to work with the gang boss when approached in the first place is so that he can become someone society accepts. For him acceptance means achieving the hallmarks of a heteronormative lifestyle by getting back together with Euijong, marrying her and starting a legit business. I do not doubt that some part of him is harboring real affection for Euijong, but his reasons for dating her again are flimsy when we consider that the very first episode introduces him as a well-established DJ with what must have been a steady income, a fanbase and a moral compass. The inherent problem Gicheul is confronted with comes from his perception of himself caused by society’s perception of him. He does not consider himself a good or successful person until he has achieved those aforementioned hallmarks. He is stuck in a world that Gicheul knows is considered criminal and morally wrong, but in contradiction to his own supposed desire, his decisions lead him to become even more entangled in the criminal underbelly.
Junmo, who shares a similar upbringing to Gicheul, has achieved those very things Gicheul supposedly desires: he managed to cut ties with his meth-addicted father, became a police officer and married the daughter of the former police commissioner. Despite this, he is still struggling to become an accepted member of society. He feels inadequate compared to his wife, their marriage is strained, he is ridiculed by her family, the police force stationed him in a rural area away from his wife, who works in Seoul, and his rough upbringing and criminal father is held over his head even years after he has moved on. It is the very reason he is recruited into the undercover operation. Junmo, despite being a respectable member of society, cannot escape from his own desires. This becomes especially apparent as the operation moves on and Junmo becomes deeper and deeper interwoven with Gicheul and the world he inhabits and represents. His engagement with the world of crime mirrors his slow acceptance of his own desires. In turn, his relationships within the police force – his tie to a life of normalcy – deteriorate. He becomes outright hostile towards his wife and mentor and the latter needs to remind him, even with his dying breath, that Junmo is still a cop (“Episode 11”). Throughout the show Junmo tries to fight and deny how much he enjoys being a part of Gangnam Union by telling himself that he protects Gicheul and the business for the case. However, this line of reasoning becomes considerably hollower at the same time as Junmo begins accepting that he feels drawn to a life of crime due to the freedom and power over his own fate and feelings it offers.
It is no coincidence that the characters around him actively witness this journey and endeavor to stop his descent into a life of crime. They are the foil to his acceptance and serve as a constant reminder that accepting his queer desires cannot be equivalent to actually fulfilling those desires. His mentor reminds Junmo of his status as a police officer, his superior reminds him to continue the mission, Gicheul reminds him “not to cross the line” (“Episode 12”) and his wife is a personified reminder of the normal life he is on the verge of abandoning.
We should take the scene composition of this moment into consideration. Both of them are mirrored in their seated positions and both of them are dressed down to a shirt and pants. They have shed their costumes and with the shedding of their disguises comes the admission of their desires. Following these screenshots, Gicheul asks, ““If I could go back in time I’d live the most normal life I could.” Haven’t you ever had this thought?” To which Junmo answers, “I’m not sure. Becoming normal…I’ve come too fucking far for that.”
What Junmo and Gicheul mean by normal life, the life Junmo had been living, is a heteronormative life. Yet he clearly states that men like them cannot have a normal life because they have come too far. However, since Junmo did live a normal life previous to the investigation, it begs the question what Junmo really means. The answer lies in the opposing idea of heteronormativity: queer men like them whose sexuality are not accepted by society.
Some might argue that he is still portrayed to love his wife and feel attracted to Haeryeon. This is partially true. As the show progresses his true feelings become progressively more apparent. At the end of the show, Euijong and Junmo are estranged. They attend the promotion ceremony separately and leave it as such (“Episode 12”). While Junmo stills feels affection for his wife for a large part of the show, the scene above as well as the one below explicitly showcases that he is not happy in these moments. Especially in the screenshot below, he keeps having flashbacks to his wife and interestingly enough to the moment he found the necklace. While the necklace belongs to Euijong, it is not meant to symbolize her or his connection to her. From the very beginning the cross necklace is a symbol for Gicheul and one could argue his love for Euijong. While in the midst of kissing Haeryeon - who serves as a doppelgänger to Gicheul due to her position as a boss for the Chinese gang - he is thinking of Gicheul, in addition to his wife. The whole scene depicts his struggle between his two opposing desires.
The show eventually culminates in his acceptance of his feelings, visible by his decision to warn Haeryeon and let her escape after realizing that he is fond of her and doing the same to her doppelgänger– Gicheul (“Episode 12”). He is jeopardizing the operation and his marriage for the simple reason that he feels some kind of love for them and wants to give them their chance at trying to live. I am choosing to describe it as living since Junmo's last words to Gicheul are a warning, a farewell and an advice, "You said you wanted a normal life. But you didn’t have a chance. No. That’s not true. That’s just an excuse. I hope you’ll end up paying for everything you did." As Junmo’s doppelgänger, a twice-fold reading hides between those lines. While it is plausible that Junmo is talking about and to himself, it is just as reasonable to assume Junmo wants for Gicheul what he cannot have. As he offers Gicheul a subtle chance at freedom, he simultaneously knows that he cannot follow him since fulfilling his real desires would go against societal expectations. He is bound to his wife and the police force and has to return to his normal life.
Although once he does, he is unhappy and desolate. Having accepted his queer desires, not only does the return to a heteronormative life not bring him any fulfillment, but he actively begins to despise the fact that society prohibits him from fulfilling them. Euijong asks him if they can go back to who they were before and the answer to that question, though never articulated by Junmo, is a negative statement (“Episode 12”). Gicheul’s return reads as if the specter of his unfulfilled desires has come back to haunt him. The scene composition serves to highlight this assumption. The music is melancholy and moody, the lighting darkened and the set small and intimate. Just as he has given Haeryeon and Gicheul a second chance, Junmo is offered the same. As Junmo's doppelgänger, Gicheul returns to seek the two of them out because he, too, cannot escape his desires – the desire to be respected, accepted and loved for who he is. Looking at Gicheul's last words and by looking at his actions throughout the show, we can see that he was torn between opposing desires as well. Gicheul describes it as, “To protect the two of you, I let go of everyone who was with me.” Here he shows self-acceptance of his feelings of affection and retrospectively all of his actions leading up to that moment are proof of that. He puts Seungho above other members who had been longer in the Union, he wants him as his bodyguard and trusts him with important tasks while at the same time pursuing Euijong. It mirrors once again Junmo who protected Gicheul and Haeryeon and lost his mentor during the investigation and who will end up losing his wife.
A moment later Gicheul asks, “Why did you let me go?” Junmo’s refusal to answer is a means of deception. Beginning to accept his desires does not mirror an acceptance by society. The ability to reflect on the conundrum he finds himself in separates him from Gicheul. Gicheul’s refusal to fully acknowledge his own queer desires and actions – even as Euijong does and tells him that she wanted to stop him from committing more crimes - and the constant battle leading to his desire for a normal life ultimately lead to his death. Junmo shooting Gicheul while wearing a non-descriptive suit, in comparison to the colorful suits he has begun wearing during the investigation, is indicative of his decision to let his head rule his heart. In one last effort, Junmo is trying to preserve his secret and remain within the constraints of societal acceptability by shooting the object of his desire.
However, a desire to stifle unwanted feelings does not equate succeeding. The show highlights this by doing a slow pan from Junmo’s wedding ring to the watch Gicheul gave him and which he is still wearing. The same watch that used to belong to Taeho, whose place Junmo took by Gicheul’s side as his closest confidant. Instead of a resolution of his desires, Junmo is left with nothing by the end of the show. He has neither the chance to go back to the way things were or to be honest about who he is. The last few shots of Episode 12 are a means to further emphasize Junmo accepting his queer desires, yet being unable to fulfill them and even being forced to disguise them.
It shows Junmo visiting Gicheul's grave, still wearing his police uniform and symbolizing his return to the closet. Junmo smokes a cigarette while looking at the sky as if he's speaking to Gicheul, then leaves the cigarette as well as his wedding ring on Gicheul's grave. The ring, the necklace,the cigarette as well as the watch Gicheul gives Junmo, and which he wears until the very end, are symbols of loyalty, devotion and companionship. Junmo keeping the watch while leaving his wedding ring at Gicheul's grave is emblematic of his struggle to balance his desires and likewise an admission which of the two has prevailed. By leaving his ring and imagining himself walking down the street with Gicheul by his side, Junmo acknowledges that he had found the kind of love, respect and companionship he thought he had desired in Euijong in Gicheul. Though due to cultural circumstances, they are not allowed to completely fulfill or reconcile those desires.
While laying out the axioms of her work in her seminal work Epistemology of the Closet, written in 1990, Sedgwick correctly claims, “Our culture still sees to its [sexual passion] being dangerous enough that women or men who find or fear they are homosexual, or are perceived by others to be so, are physically and mentally terrorized through the institutions of law, religion, psychotherapy, mass culture, medicine, the military, commerce, bureaucracy, and brute violence” (58). While Sedgwick was writing from an Euro-American point of view, we cannot deny the saliency and poignancy of that statement with regards to Junmo’s final choice and the suffering he feels as a consequence of these cultural constraints.
The Worst of Evil is by no means refusing to fulfill its promise nor is it lacking in good writing. When provided, writers, directors, editors and actors work together to create a coherent whole. The Worst of Evil did not set out to present a story with a little bit of homoerotic tension, but rather one that presents multiple readings on different levels. In writing this, I did not even go into detail on the use of code names to conceal identities, the prevalent religious symbolism or Euijong’s and Haeryeun’s desires.
It can be said that The Worst of Evil depicts the struggle of a man trying to finish the mission he has been given while holding on to his morals on the one hand, and on another, it offers a queer reading of what it means to hold on to those morals. By introducing four characters that serve as each other's doppelgängers the show highlights the character's struggle between their queer desires and their desires for acceptance, or as the show puts it, between their hearts and their minds. Doing a close reading of Junmo’s journey, seeing as he is the main character, and posing him against Gicheul as his doppelgänger and object of desire, proves this. His entanglement with Gicheul marks his descent into a life of crime to mirror his journey of acceptance toward his queer desires, while staying aware that he cannot fulfill them due to constant societal pressures. Both characters represent two sides of the same coin as Gicheul has already accepted his queer desires, but wants to fight them in order to become an accepted member of society while Junmo is theoretically already an accepted member of society and is fighting his queer desires so he does not lose the respect he has garnered.
It would be interesting to examine the female characters in more depth so if time allows it, I might do a post about them. For now I hope that whoever made it to the end of this mammoth had had some fun reading it, had their questions answered or might even have a different interpretation of things and wants to engage with this post. Feel free to do so.
If you're on the app, immediately go to your dms and then "add friends". After the latest update they allow your contacts to find you and have that option turned on by default, so make sure it's unchecked!
This is very obviously not great for a multitude of reasons, but especially for people in vulnerable positions who do not want people in their contacts to see who they are on discord and/or know they have discord in the first place. I've also tried finding out if this is a thing on desktop but haven't been able to find any mention of it, so either it's not a "feature" (yet) or they've hidden it. Either way, stay safe, and turn off finding friends via contacts!
[ID: three screenshots from the discord app with circles around the buttons to press to get to this "feature". 1: the messages/DM button, 2: the "add friends button", 3: in the add friends page, the "allow contacts to add me" checkbox. /END ID]
Other options I honestly assumed everybody already had turned off but just in case they hadn't for any reason:
privacy settings inside discord itself: "you" > settings > privacy and safety > scroll down and turn off "sync contacts", "phone", "e-mail", and optionally "use data to improve discord"
[ID: screenshots with the above mentioned buttons circled. /END ID]
App permissions via phone settings (my phone is a Samsung Android, this might look different for iOS and different Android brands!)
Settings > scroll down to apps > scroll down to discord > permissions > make sure contacts is under "not allowed"
[ID: screenshots with the above mentioned buttons circled and directions written down. /END ID]
Multiple others have also said this in the notes and tags, but apparently it's just really bad UI design, where the ticked box is specifically for when you click on "find friends". Apologies for the misleading OP, several servers I was in started talking about this and I hadn't seen anyone on tumblr post about it, which is why I made the post in the first place.
You should still definitely double check your permissions and whether or not your contacts are synced within discord, though, because that would still enable others to find you through your contacts.
kianamaiart
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theartofmadeline
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