Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers - Comfort Crowd

..help? 

sunah and yohan

sunah is behind yohan because of her role in the story. she’s a bigger player than yohan initially realized. she’s behind his back and slightly above him, but he’s aware of her presence.

however, that’s also why she’s covering one eye. because yohan is blinded and cannot see the entirety of sunah’s plan. mainly because he didn’t know it existed in the first place. he only has one eye open because he can only see what he knows. she’s literally impacting his eyesight.

then, there’s the fact that she’s covering his right eye. the left has played a significant role in the show, with both gaon and yohan on the left. gaon, the precious sidekick who sits at the left, and yohan, who earns himself a scar on his left hand. soohyun was gaon’s right, but yohan is his left. this can also mean yohan has only had tunnel vision for gaon and his own plans for him.

gaon and yohan

their positions indicate one is more dominant than the other, but in this case, i think it’s more along the lines of gaon isn’t just a looming presence for yohan, he’s literally giving and the reason yohan has light on his face. but gaon’s back is turned away from the light and toward the darkness. this represent the story arcs each character goes through, with yohan walking into the light by the end of the show, and gaon having to walk through the darkness to get to a neutral, more hopeful place. he rises above despite the dark.

gaon and soohyun

similar to the middle poster, gaon’s back is turned away from the light while soohyun is facing it. she represents gaon’s hope, and she’s staring at gaon in judgment. gaon’s face is tilted down, almost as if he’s ashamed that she’s looking at him for choosing the side shrouded in darkness.

You know what I really love about it? I love that nobody explained Pat's feelings to him, nobody told him 'you're acting like this or that you must be into him'. He felt what he felt, and yes he got a nudge from Paa's 4 signs, but he went on this journey of discovery on his own, he really sat with himself and worked it out, and thought it through. He went all the way back through their history and questioned what he felt and did even then. His realisation came from within, it wasn't something anybody pushed him to, not even Pran. It came straight from his own heart.

There's a line in Pran's perspective from the novel that I really love that sparked for me here: There were times when I looked at Pat's face while treating his wounds and wondered what he meant to me. Here, Pat is the one who is going on that journey of trying to figure out what Pran means to him, and he's doing it not because anybody pointed something out to him, but because he felt something within himself and chose to explore it rather than ignore it like he would have done before. And he doesn't really discuss it with anybody, not Paa, not Korn, not Ink. Even when they try to draw him out about what he's thinking he demurs. He doesn't want anybody else's voice in his head about this. There's going to be enough of that if what he discovers within himself is love, enough voices saying this and that. And because it's Pran, something in him knows that he has to be absolutely sure if this is the path he's going to take. He can't go into this on a whim or anything less than 100% certainty. Because once he makes that move there will be absolutely no turning back.

3 words. 8 letters.

"i love you."

Have you not had a secret crush on anyone before?

not so quick pitch 

Light on Me (2021 - Korea) 

Rating: 10/10

Foundational Romance Trope: friends to love triangle

There were some who thought this BL slow, and I get that, but really it’s just subtle and quiet. With Light on Me, Korea gave us an honest to goodness high school set BL with some classic old school yaoi tropes almost like they were doing a bit of a, 

“now that we’ve hit our stride, let’s perfect the vanilla sheet cake BL style.” 

It was great, of course, but very refined and elegant which some found off putting. It made me think of something like this… 

It’s what Korea does, repackage and perfect vanilla cake into this pretty glowing confection of precision joy. I’m cool with that. By all means, please include BL in the Hallyu take over. This is the K-pop of BL En-Hyphen style, manufactured super-powered cute but… restrained. 

But that doesn’t make it any less gut wrenching to watch. In fact, it makes every subtle tentative movement of care that ShinWoo attempts that much more telling. It makes every fear of exposure that prevents DaOn from taking action that much more traumatic. It makes every moment of TaeKyung’s brutal honestly and blunt communication that much more powerful. 

It’s like that intense moment of focus on the hand flex in an Austen adaptation - we are awaiting every crack in the sugar sculpture with bated breath. 

The filming in this show was precision engineered. The frame was kept uncluttered, characters appeared exactly in the center, there was little visual noise, and the lighting was full on, even in night shots. To me this reflected the character of TaeKyung - honest and almost stilted in his mannerisms. I feel like the director filmed this series as if the show itself were TaeKyung: careful and clear and specific. 

This may come off as one-note or simplistic to a casual viewer but it’s actually quite difficult to film something so precisely and still make it interesting to watch. It forced the viewer to focus almost entirely on the actor’s faces, their nuanced emotion, and their interpersonal relationships to the exclusion of all else. Lucky for us those actors served the lens beautifully. 

There is literally NOTHING distracting about this directing style. It’s like the camera was a neutral white room, a well-lit gallery in which the narrative hung suspended for us all to stand and stare at in hushed silence.

A love triangle has never before looked so perfect or been executed so perfectly, and it never will again. All BL love triangles that come after Light On Me (and we will get them now) are going to be unfavorably compared to this show. 

When I posted about Korea’s history with BL, I talked about how strategic and clever they are with tropes. Light on Me is a master class in how to use tropes to manipulate audience sympathy so they can’t decide which pair they prefer. Korean BL never just throws in a trope without purpose - they calculate its impact on story structure. Basically, LoM used this technique to infect fans with Second Lead Syndrome. It’s SO GOOD.  

So yes, Light on Me was cleverly engineered, but it was also SPECIAL, and here’s why:

This show gave us a small cast of beautifully acted complex and sympathetic characters and dwelled on their different motivations, communication styles, and narrative roles. It gently explored not what it means to love, or even be in love, but what it means to act on love, and what that says about integrity and emotional courage. In doing so, it managed to treat its characters with integrity too. And not just the three main characters but the mentor, the faen fatal, and the best friend support characters too. 

This show felt very fair. Fair to its characters. Fair to its story. And fair to us, the watchers. 

For me this BL was classy, a real winner, not the least of which because they NAILED the landing, including the final kiss. Korea is DOMINATING 2021. Like seriously. What’s going on here?  

Full analysis of the love triangle trope under the context of the second half fo this BL here. 

Bravo, Korea.

(source)

Sarawat’s ‘wtf is happening’ face