The issue I have is that people assume because there is attraction, it must mean romantic (or sexual). Tae-gu is definitely fascinated by Kwon-joo, but it’s because he views her as an elusive prey. For someone who seems to have had a fairly easy life when it comes to killing people (I mean, when you come right down to it, his father literally buys “unwanted” people for him hunt and kill, just as though they were toys), here is one that is intelligent and fights back. In fact, I think a large part of his giddy glee when he saw her wall of evidence and red string is the discovery that she has also been hunting him. She is no normal prey.
[More after the jump! My apologies to mobile users, and if you’re coming to this on my tumblr page and not your dash, Anon, you’ll probably need to click the post to get the rest of the answer since this theme doesn’t always put a “more” link when I use it on an ask.]
But she is still just that to him – prey. I can’t agree that his attraction to her “humanizes” him because the show has taken great pains to convince us that he’s not really human. He’s been repeatedly called a monster and the devil (and, to be honest, it’s easy to believe he is just that when he has taken such joy in killing anyone that has possibly hurt him or stood in his way).
To him, Kwon-joo is not a person. She is something to be toyed with, to be teased and tormented until he finally sees fit to give the final blow.
I actually think it’s pretty interesting that the show hasn’t placed him in any romantic or sexual light*. Even though he’s a young and handsome chaebol (at least, to those who don’t know about his murderous tendencies), he’s not been shown partying around with a gaggle of women, or even just one woman. When Jin-hyuk looked into his past, there was no record of a scandal, and I presume that includes scandals with women (or men – hey, I’m not gonna judge, but I know Dramaland and its heteronormative default). I very much doubt he often brings dates home, since he seems more interested in bringing dead bodies home instead.
That’s not to say Tae-gu has no sexual desire, but it’s notable that his idea of power and dominance is through straight-up brutality and not through sex. He’s killed women before, but from what we’ve seen, hasn’t tried to rape them. Instead, he gets his jollies from the hunt and the sensation of crushing their skulls.
Which, again, is why I give a serious, serious side-eye to those who want to ship him with Kwon-joo. She is an amazing woman who’s worked hard to get where she is, even when no one else believed her. She’s careful and smart as she figures out not only how to save those under the Golden Time (okay, maybe not that careful and smart because c’mon stop going to creepy empty hallways without back-up!), but also in accumulating information that gradually lead her to discover that Tae-gu is the killer she’s been searching for all these years. To her, Tae-gu is the monster that we all know he is. He killed her father, he’s killed so many others – he’s ruthless and shameless. He’s evil and he must be brought to justice.
So for someone to go “eeeee, I ship it!” just because both characters have an obsessive determination to hunt the other feels like it trivializes just how much Tae-gu has hurt and damaged her life. Not just that he killed her father, but thanks to the cover-up by his father and Sang-tae, he made her lose her job and respect within the community. She was treated as a laughingstock and something to be scorned. Yes, she is strong and resilient, but he ruined her life. And he plans to ruin it even more, just for kicks. He knew that his visit to her apartment would scare her, and yet he couldn’t hide his laughter. That is what makes him happy – making her fear for her life.
While I don’t know how the final two episodes will play out, at this point in the show, there’s really no way that Tae-gu can be redeemed. There’s no “oh my mother abandoned me when I was a baby boo-hoo” story that can possibly excuse his murderous behavior. At this point, the only truly “honorable” thing he could do is either confess to his crimes and spend a lifetime in prison, or fall on his sword (kettlebell?) and kill himself.
Perhaps if this writer spent more time developing the characters, there could be some hope. But as it stands right now, he has shown himself to be nothing but pure evil. There is no goodness in him. There is no saving him.
It is true, though, that relationships are inherently messy and so many of them are filled with bad decisions. Maybe I would actually like rom-coms more if they didn’t try to convince me that two diametrically opposed people would suddenly fall in love and live happily ever after, just because the writers said so. Maybe I would suffer less from second-lead syndrome if the male leads weren’t persistently written in such a way that I would instinctively label them as abusive (either emotionally or psychologically, and even sometimes physically), and wish the woman would run the hell away and never look back.
Then again, I think “love conquers all” is utter bullshit, especially with romance. I will, however, happily accept more stories of love that is familial and platonic, because, to me, those are the most endearing and sustaining. That’s why I give only a vague side-eye to those who want to ship Kwon-joo with Jin-hyuk. Part of me understands it – they’re the leads, they’re thrown together, they have to learn to trust and rely on each other. It makes sense, since most dramas would probably go there anyway. But I love that there’s been no hint of romance between them, simply because there aren’t enough platonic male-female friendships represented in media, especially in mutual work environments (where platonic friendship actually makes the most sense, since dating in the workplace is incredibly messy and often ends in disaster, although you wouldn’t know it by most of Dramaland’s offerings).
So I’m not saying “kill it with fire” to a Kwon-joo/Jin-hyuk ship because I can see how these two co-workers, thrown together in a multitude of intense situations as they pursue the same goal, could be appealing to someone. Jin-hyuk has learned to respect Kwon-joo, and is not out to sabotage her. He actually supports her and listens to her.
I am saying “kill it with fire” to a Kwon-joo/Tae-gu ship because it pits her with someone who doesn’t see her as human and only sees her as a thing to amuse him until he decides she’s no longer worth his time. It diminishes who she is as a woman or even simply as a person. He is a monster, and I’m repulsed by the unspoken implication that she could “save” him because of the attraction (or supposed “love”) he has for her. Not that’s what everyone thinks when they consider this so-called ship, but it is the standard representation when we see this kind of dynamic in fiction – the “bad boy” that the woman will save through the power of her sparkly “I’m not like the other girls” vagina. (Again, Tae-gu is not some moody, broody chaebol/cursed vampire/hurt momma’s boy. He is an unrepentant psychopath who gets joy out of tormenting the most challenging prey he’s yet encountered.)
I get it, though. I know that it’s somehow so easy to default to crackling chemistry and want to ship all the things, no matter what, no matter how terrible they are. Some of the best (worst?) ships come from this.** The attraction is there, even if it is only sadistically one-sided. And even though I don’t read fanfiction, I know there are enough of the “oh hell no” ships out there that people are gonna ship what they’re gonna ship, no matter the logistics or actual characterizations. Maybe someone’s cooking up a theory that says Tae-gu will eventually realize the error of his ways and spend the rest of his life in prison pining for the one woman who got away. Or maybe someone’s embracing the insanity and is like “this shit is fucked up but damn the sex is hawt.”
In the end, I guess I’m just too fond of Kwon-joo as a character and a woman, and everything she represents in terms of her intelligence and desire to help people even as she longs for justice in her own life, to see her linked romantically to a murdering psychopath – no matter how gorgeous his cheekbones are.
*of course, as we all well know, Kim Jae Wook is hella sexy and I’m not gonna deny I’d probably do some terrible things for a few minutes in heaven with him, but that’s the actor, not the character.
**for example, even though I know, instinctively, that these two are terrible for each other and will forever end in tears, you can tear the LoVe*** from my cold dead hands. They are Epic and will always be Epic.
***Logan/Veronica from Veronica Mars, who I immediately started shipping**** from the first “Annoy, tiny blonde one, annoy like the wind” and still get a little tingly from that first kiss as the camera cranes outward and “Momentary Thing” plays.
****and I suppose someone could argue that “well you ship [problematic thing] so stop being a cry-baby about other people shipping [problematic thing], and besides, it’s just fiction*****, so who cares what other people do with fictional characters?” To which I say “dude this is tumblr I will overthink whatever the hell I want and also women should not be shipped with brutal psychopaths who only see them as a means for their sadistic pleasure, especially when those psychopaths have totally and unrepentantly ruined those women’s lives and will kill them after they’ve had their fun.”******
*****yeah, it’s just fiction, but stories matter and if I can smash one patriarchal belief that a woman can save a broken and screwed up guy just because he lurves her then I think I will have fulfilled a purpose that I didn’t know I had but I will gladly accept.
******is2fg no one tell me there’s a fanfic out there where Tae-gu is revealed to be a necrophiliac bc there’s not enough brain bleach out there to unsee that image even though it would probably make total sense, dammit.
The Obsessive Dilettante 