Well we are now half way through this deLIGHTful show, so I think I have reserved the right by now, and endured enough, as your Ghost Queen who literally died for your enjoyment, to make this weekโ€™s Hotel De La Luna Shitpost a good old OG therapeutic Sico Rant tearing this show to shreds.
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โ˜  NUMERUS UNUS, Iโ€™m just gonna go right ahead and say it: Iโ€™m sorry but this show has absolutely shocking directing in it.
From the strange use of shaky cam during conversations and mid-section close ups, to the forced romantic tension of our leads in the first four episodes, to the scenes that are supposed to be funny or moving but just arenโ€™t, to the awkward dialogue and deliveryโ€ฆ the list goes on.
At the start of episode 7 there is a literal line where Chan Seong goes
โ€œMi Ra did that to me long ago. I just remembered how angry I wasโ€ . (pics for reference)
First of all, nobody really says this in English or in Korean, unless theyโ€™re being a little bit humorous, and even when they are being humorous itโ€™s an extremely weird and rare thing for someone to say, especially in the way it was said here.
Secondly, Jingooโ€™s delivery of this line is not humorous, rather he is deliberately reminiscing out loud and telling us what he is feeling which is absurd, because nobody does this, and itโ€™s awkward and also completely unnecessary because we do not need to know this nor have this scene at all. We know she has debt issues and we know already he doesnโ€™t like it. WHY WAS THIS LINE HERE.
And why was it so awfully written? I actually paused the video to calm myself down because it was so bad.

This is just one example but there are actually a lot of other instances of dialogue being written in this awful, cringey and unnecessary manner in the show, and being delivered even more awkwardly. What should be funny lines by talented actors, are just stinted.
Everything the bartender says is one such case. I get that his deadpan and monologue state is supposed to be funny, but he doesnโ€™t pull it off at all.
Several of the scenes between IU and Jingoo are another such case. I think I mentioned this in a previous shitpost. Theyโ€™re supposed to either be vibing off each other for comedy, or there is supposed to be A Momentโ„ข, and neither happens as it should. Itโ€™s just janky and I canโ€™t even follow the dialogue in the way Iโ€™m supposed to sometimes.

Iโ€™ve been watching kdramas for four and a half years; translation is NOT the issue.
And Jingoo for one, is not a bad actor. So what the hell is going on here, if itโ€™s not the actors either?! (although it might be the actors in everyone but the leadsโ€™ caseโ€ฆ)

A) How a scene comes across on screen has a lot to do with the director. This director is pretty useless at knowing what kind of camera shot to use for a conversation, so I am willing to bet that a big reason for these scenes being so bad is that theyโ€™re simply directed terribly.
B) The other main contributor to dialogue, if not the actors or director, is the writing. And Iโ€™m sorry to say that this points to the Hong Sisters and them being shit at writing dialogue. Donโ€™t worry though; lots of people are shit at writing dialogue. Itโ€™s a big reason why I stopped watching American television shows.

โ˜  NUMERUS DEUS, As I have been saying from episode one, and as has now been pointed out multiple times, even by the Empress Javabeans herself, this is Hwayugi 2.0, with a splash of Goblin (and also every other Hong Sisterโ€™s drama ever.)
I havenโ€™t seen Goblin, so I canโ€™t comment on that.
But I have seen Hwayugi.

And one of my biggest frustrations about Hotel De La Luna, is that it does almost all the same things RIGHT as Hwayugi, and all the same things WRONG, and then some, as Hwayugi, and yet the general reception of HdlL is praise and adoration, whereas Hwayugi was hated on for almost the entirety of its run.

Now, I donโ€™t think that Hwayugi was an excellent drama by any stretch of the word, but it did have some things going for it, and I did happen to enjoy it for those things specifically and just kind of sat through the rest. I also donโ€™t think that HdlL does said things quite as well as Hwayugi, despite the crowd reception.

1) The Monkey King
The biggest thing Hwayugi had going for it, the best part of it, the main thing that made it watchable and enjoyable at all was the Monkey King.
Or more specifically, Lee Seung Gi as the Monkey King. Now, I like Man Weol, and IU is doing a decent job. But sheโ€™s not the Monkey King.
I found the Monkey King, despite being shackled by the bad plot writing, to be very rich in his characterisation, and whilst I like Man Weol, Iโ€™m not nearly as invested in her characterisation.
I think this is caused by a combination of the directing and writing issues I mentioned previously (and to follow), and the acting.
Now before someone jumps down my throat at that, please note, I do not think IU is a bad actress.
Rather I think she has met her current limit in acting, in that she cannot draw Man Weol entirely out of the clichรฉ fest and probably-weakly-written-on-paper Man Weol that the Hong Sisters wrote her as.

Just to compare; Moon Loverโ€™s Scarlet Heart Ryeo was a directional nightmare, and written poorly too. Lee Joong Ki had to direct his own co-stars in how to die convincingly on screen because the director was that incompetent, and he was subsequently that showโ€™s almost sole saving grace, because he was able to act even when the script was irrational jargon.
IU had to deal with such poor direction and writing, and was subjected to being a dear eyed doll for the entire show, which unfortunately for her, did nothing to convince me that she could act.
HdlL at least has convinced me enough that she CAN act (I havenโ€™t seen My Ahjussi), but she is not yet at the level where she can carry an entire show with bad direction and questionable writing on her back.
And this isnโ€™t necessarily a bad thing: Very few actors can do this, and even then, one good actor cannot save a trainwreck script. (See: Ziggy in Hundred Million Stars, Shin Hye Sun in Angelโ€™s Last Mission, Lee Joong Ki in Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo)

I do however, think Lee Seung Gi managed to pull the Monkey King from whatever bare bones he was given and turn him into something memorable and nuanced than the show he was in. He didnโ€™t save the show, but at least what I remember first from Hwayugi is The Monkey King and not everything else.
I do think IU is definitely trying to take Man Weol as far as she can, and I appreciate her effort, because Man Weol is for sure the best part of this show, but I think a reason why I canโ€™t quite invest in her as much as I would like to is because IU isnโ€™t quite there yet with her acting.
However, Chan Seong also does jack for me, and even though I do not think these roles suit him (please just can he play villains for a year), Jingoo is a great actor, and is also definitely trying.
Thus I think any limits in acting that exist are only a part of why I canโ€™t connect to these characters, and that the biggest fault does in fact lie with the direction of them, and how theyโ€™re written.

There are a lot of similarities between Man Weol and the Monkey King in other ways, quite worrying ways actually, the biggest one being their power, as I mentioned in Shitpost 1.
No amount of acting on LSGโ€™s part could save him from the heretical writing that turned him into a puppet of the gods by the end rather than the fully enriched and individual godlike character he shouldโ€™ve been.
This is the problem with most over powered characters in all story writing though: do they have limits and how do you write those limits without them just conveniently not being as powerful as they previously have been when the plot requires?
I fear the same thing will happen to Man Weol as it did to Son Oh Gong.
I also fear that the romantic development between her and Chan Seong will take a similar route to that of Samjang and Son Oh Gong, and thatโ€™s not a good thing either.

I also just โ€ฆ like the Monkey King better.
cont.

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      I tagged you on my wall in case you are missing a particular hottie these days.

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    2) Secondary Characters
    HdlL and Hwayugi have almost exactly the same carbon copy cut outs for their secondary characters except that Hwayugi did it a lot better. The older male, the other female, the quirky male lesser being/underling, and the new female recruit who has a love line with the quirky male underling and comes from a dead human and is definitely the scene stealerโ€ฆ, and all of them with an incessant habit of being exposition fairiesโ€ฆ
    However;
    The bartender is not Mawang/Cha Seung Won
    The cleaning lady is not Secretary Ma
    PO is definitely not Hongki
    And Yu Na, is not Zombie Buja and never will be.

    In fact I find the side characters of HdlL, with the exception of Yu Na, to be quite boring, and not funny at all. Hwayugi, despite ruining Se Youngโ€™s wonderful Zombie character by making her a contrived villainess in the second half, had infinitely better, more interesting and more engaging secondary characters. I liked them. They were constantly amusing and drew me in. Their banter was fun and quotable.
    HdlLโ€™s secondary characters are weaker in their writing, their direction and their portrayal. There have been several instances where they have delivered a joke and five seconds later I have suddenly gone โ€œoh that was supposed to be funny? Then why wasnโ€™t it funnyโ€. *see numerous unus*
    Unfortunately, despite Hwayugi having the better characters, it did loose what little great characterisation it had with its poor writing in the end.

    And both shows have the issue of treating said secondary characters like a mythology exposition vending machine, wherein they spout things we need to know about the leads, the mythos and the gods exactly when we need to know them. Instead of writing a rich world we learn about through other means, and rich histories of characters we can learn about through flashbacks or actions and reactions, we simply get told everything.
    If youโ€™ve ever needed a reason to think the Hong Sisters are not as good as you think they are at writing, you neednโ€™t look any farther than their obsession with exposition and complete inability to world build /tell a story without it.

    Hwayugi also had the problem of spending TOO much time on the secondary characters and their expository nonsense, rather than on the (infinitely more interesting) leads.
    HdlL has a similar problem but with plot instead.
    cont.

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    3) The Plot
    Hwayugi had the advantage plot wise in that it was based (loosely) on Journey To The West, thus giving it a core story and quest plot line to work around. Never mind that it lost the plot at episode 9, it had a place to start.

    Now, quest plots are one of the oldest and most traditional story telling concepts in the world. One of the things I did like about Hwayugi is that it took the traditional story telling concept of a quest as a weekly concept as well as its overarching concept.
    Thus it had a ghost, or quest of the week. (Sound familiar?)
    I enjoyed this because it felt like lots of little quests that contributed to the Big Overall Quest, kind of like the original story of JTTW.
    However, HdlL fails here, where Hwayugi did not. Because HdlL is essentially trying to be a quest story without the core quest.
    Back when this show was first announced I made a comment that it apparently has no plot. Iโ€™m honestly not convinced it has one now either. OK so it has the bare bones of a plot.
    But it certainly doesnโ€™t have an original story to base its plot on, which really doesnโ€™t do it any favours, and makes the Goblin and Hwayugi-esqueness stand out a whole lot more, because it has simply borrowed its โ€œcoreโ€ plot from them, instead of having its own.

    I thought Hwayugi did a decent job of making sure the quest of the week helped forward the overall plot. I find that HdlL does this less so. There has been one too many episodes (specifically 6 and 7) where it felt like the actual plot of Man Weol and Chan Seong was moving around the plot of the week, and not with it.
    We would get very little of our leads and their story.
    The Hong sisters seemed much more focused on making one elongated meta reference to The Crowned Clown that didnโ€™t forward the background plot at all, and making sure they did their part in telling us all what they thought of the Burning Sun Scandal, instead of oh, I donโ€™t know, developing the romance perhaps.

    Man Weol and Chan Seong, despite neither of them being the Monkey King, are still my favourite part of this show and itโ€™s a crying shame, much like when Hwayugi abandoned the Monkey King for nonsense, that they are not used or seen MORE.
    Some plot lines do seem to tie into Man Weolโ€™s development but even in something like Episode 4 with the wedding ghost plot, which was actually one of my favourites, only the ending contributed to anything and we were still dragged around for most of the episode doing very little at all.
    Most of the time used in a โ€œghost of the weekโ€ sidequest makes it feel too much like a sidequest and filler than it does like anything that invests me more in Man Weol and Chan Seongโ€™s story and development.
    Oh yeah, Hwayugi also never fully developed its fantasy story telling devices and mythologies, and instead had a strange lukewarm ending that didnโ€™t make sense, and threw logic out the windowโ€ฆ so you can definitely say goodbye to Hotel De La Luna doing anything different.

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    cont.

    A huge part of the reason I am struggling to enjoy this show so much, is that I can see all the same flaws in it that Hwayugi had, and it fills me with dread, because I know exactly where this is going if it stays on the Hwayugi Remake path.
    The other thing is that itโ€™s uhโ€ฆ just not Hwayugi. It has less good elements to it than Hwayugi overall, and so the likelyhood of it ending better than Hwayugi on top of that is very low.
    I also think that if you canโ€™t make original stories anymore, and just have to write fan fiction of and rip off your own content, then youโ€™re not a very good writer.
    Ripping off your own content (clichรฉs, symbolism, characters and story) this heavily, and then pretending all is well because โ€œoh look we switched the gender roles!โ€ does not make your show smart, clever or good; it just makes it a gender bent rip off.
    Imagine if someone came up to me (if you know me at all), and said โ€œHey weโ€™re gonna remake Lookout, but Kim Young Kwang is not gonna be Do Han, and Do Han is not going to be Do Han at all, heโ€™s going to be Do Hanโ€™s female counter part in an alternate reality, and all the supporting characters are gonna be way lamer versions of themselves, and the weak plot is gonna be even weaker. Do you wanna watch it?โ€
    Like. No.
    Of course I donโ€™t frakking want to watch it. Why would I want to watch that kind of remake of anything let alone of a show and characters I liked despite their flaws?
    Like can you frakking imagine if someone was like โ€œyeah weโ€™re gonna remake Lookout but WITHOUT KYKโ€?
    Yeah, no?
    If I had known going in this was just gonna be a Hwayugi ripoff with some Goblin and Harry Potter music thrown in, but WITHOUT the Monkey King, I wouldnโ€™t have even started it in the first place. But I didnโ€™t know and Iโ€™m here now, and Iโ€™m a sadistic masochist and dedicated shitposter, so we will continue.

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    cont.
    โ˜  NUMERO TRES I donโ€™t know how to explain this next point and I honestly donโ€™t care enough about it to try and point out the metaphysical problems with it, but this show simultaneously has:
    1. A Deliberately Morally Ambiguous (read: Inconsistent) Magical Abode
    2. That Deals With (actually not really that morally ambiguous after all) Issues of Right and Wrong and Judgement Every Week
    3. Whilst also adhering to a philosophy of Whatโ€™s the Point Anyway If The Gods Are Assholes and Have a Plan We Canโ€™t Control
    4. But also ultimately being about A Redemption through Love Arc for Our Morally Grey Main Character โ€ฆ
    โ€ฆwhich will eventually lead toโ€ฆ
    5. Screw The Gods Iโ€™ma do what I want anyway but ACTUALLY SIKE it was their (read: The Hong Sisters who are terrible at writing) plan ALL ALONG.
    Free Will Whatโ€™s Free Will When Your Author(S) Can Just Play God.
    And then they all lived Happily Never After. The End.
    until two years later when we reboot this again

    โ€ฆyeah isnโ€™t this show aMAZING?

    โ˜  P.S. I wasnโ€™t even remotely shocked that the General betrayed her and therefore she killed everyone and thatโ€™s why sheโ€™s bound to the stupid tree. Was anyone shocked by that? Cos I found it bloody predictable.
    Like a lot of this show.
    Oh and why bother making Chan Seong think she left left? Such contrived angst and tension in this thing.
    I feel nothing.
    I am aware I am a cold, heartless, also dead, Ice Queen but come on!

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      Pfft. I enjoyed your essay, Sic. I am enjoying the show but you being objective and criticizing it was wonderful.

      This deserves 99999999 upvotes.

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      This is what a wrote about Hwayugi sometime last year โ€˜a zippy fun show with a lot of interesting side charactersโ€™. I will not to writing the same about HDL even with all the similarities.

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    @lixie, @bbstl, @hebang it’s Sic essay time again.

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      Sic, thanks so much for the tag! I cannot detail my dislikes of the show as you have but I just think it’s dull. There’s a lot of fancy stuff between IU’s wardrobe and the special effects but the pace is really off. I don’t feel any “chemi” and am ready to say that YJG isn’t a great actor (or maybe I’m just tired of seeing him in every other show lately). Then when you compare it to Hwayugi I really feel the difference (agree with you totally on the secondary characters in each show). Hwayugi was fun and I cared about what was happening to all the characters but in HDL it feels more like I’m just waiting to see what IU will wear next (although I had some of that w LSG, snicker). Or waiting to go back to the past story, that’s a bit better.

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      As we discussed before, I see the same similarities. The differences I see are due, I think, to two key intended differences. One, Hwayugi was an ensemble (wonderful) adventure story. HdL is the Manwol show. Two, Hwayugi ghost stories were independent adventures under the overarching quest. HdL ghost stories are intended as morality tales to teach MW to move on. Given the two design decisions, that HdL has weaker secondary characters, and a weaker story follows, especially given a weaker creative team. Not to excuse the weaknesses, obviously.

      The moral axis of the HdL world really gets on my nerves. As I understand it, a human can kill a thousand humans, and the price is his spirit gets reincarnated through the ages as the โ€œchicken in the chicken soup โ€œ until the karmic debt is sort of paid off – at which point reincarnation as a human is reinstated. But a spirit takes one life, and the price is that spirit is extinguished for ever. Seems wrong to me.

      And lord no surprise at the captainโ€™s betrayal. Donโ€™t know anyone who was surprised. Itโ€™s possible to debate the point of the betrayal, but thatโ€™s about it.

      Iโ€™m in to see whether we have a survivable crash landing or a total loss or …

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        The moral axis of the show, particularly in episode 7, drives me insane but because this show stated at the beginning that the Hotel doesn’t Judge By Human Morality, I don’t really feel it’s worthwhile at all to rant about the issues with that. It doesn’t care about it and never will and the Hong Sisters just like playing God and seeing how much they can get away with by calling it world building.

        So I did notice that the ghost of the weak seems to be to try and convince Man weol to learn things and move on, however I only really felt that in about 3 of the 8 episodes.
        It’s also entirely hilarious to me that the whole point of this show is apparently to teach Man Weol moral lessons so she gets her redemption whilst also not caring about morality whenever its convenient elsewhere in the show.

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      Might want to look at this link for an explanation of the โ€œMan Who Would Be Kingโ€ episode. I have to say it never occurred to me.

      https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2019/08/06/hotel-del-luna-the-return-of-the-king/#comment-9732

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        My problem with bitchesoverdramas is that they tend to come up with brilliant theories about canon that assume the writing is way smarter than it is, just because they filled in all the holes themselves. I think I’d be ok with it if I thought they did it out of jest, but they way they write doesn’t always imply that.
        I also completely dislike this approach to canon as it excuses a lot of technical flaws.
        They did this with MOA too. They broke down exactly how a interdimensional travelling game would work, and it was great, except for the fact that none of that was clear or developed or shown in the show, and I don’t think the MOA writer is even remotely intelligent enough to have even thought of everything said article did.

        Here, this is a great breakdown of the Captain’s character and the potential for him to be said actor, however I don’t even the Captain is fully developed as a character enough to make said assumptions about him, and while I think that maybe the parallels between the actor and Manweol and her past life are on purpose, I think it’s much more likely that it’s just another TCC reference to the Clown who would be King and who got it so into his head that he was the King and that he was the better King he excused the death of the real King… Episode 6 was one giant big TCC meta reference from start to finish, not some deep symbolism for Man Weol’s inability to see through the Captain’s sweet talking. The Hong Sisters fall back on meta far more often than they do on such clever symbolism.

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          Exactly my thoughts on their first post about MOA. kkk

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      Thanks for the interesting post! It’s so funny to me that you find so many similarities with Hwayugi, I’m not sure I agree. I have only watched HdL up until ep 6 so please don’t consider what happens after them.
      Man Weol to me is Goblin in a skirt. Well, a hundred skirts. She was a warrior, she was betrayed, she was loyal, killed many people and got trapped in an immortal life which turned her into a emotionally reclused person except for those 15 min every ep in which she becomes nice and wise because plots needs it. That’s all Goblin there. Except IU is no Gong Yoo so she can’t pull it off and I don’t believe MW is real for a second. There is also the fact that manager is there to redeem her and set her free, just like Goblin.
      Despite bad directing and lack of plot I can deal with all that, if only they had nice main characters which was always HS strong points, but in HdL I can only barely believe in ChanSeong. He is almost likeable and relatable, just not quite.
      There are some insane decisions on the logic department that are very strange even for kdramas. For example MW was just going to let the bride kill Sanchez in ep 5, why??? The entire staff is happy to greet a king, why would it matter to them? A vip in this place should be someone like a saint not a possible murderer. It was just so stupid and childish. Also MW sometimes knows the story or at least basic facts behind ghosts, and sometimes she doesn’t. Why? Also why would a joseon ghost roam around for so long and not turn evil? Again in Hwayugi the jokes usually made sense but in HdL stuff happens just because it’s supposed to be funny. Very Goblin.

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        I think we agree that this is a big rehash. Itโ€™s such a big rehash we can find points of correspondence with multiple dramas, myths, etc.

        The not funny parts didnโ€™t bother me so much because I didnโ€™t think they were supposed to be funny. Iโ€™m viewing this as a series of morality plays and I never had the expectation that this dramaโ€™s creative team would deliver funny morality plays. So I am pleasantly surprised if I get a chuckle out of something, intended or not.

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        I mean… You don’t have to agree I guess lol, but the similarities between Hwayugi are pretty much objectively undeniable. It’s not exactly as if any of the similarities I pointed out between the two are false?

        Even having not seen Goblin I can also see the similarities on my own; I just can’t comment on them because I haven’t watched the show. But thanks for pointing them all out to me, now I have even more ammunition for proving this show to be a hack… I mean what.

        “ChanSeong. He is almost likeable and relatable, just not quite.” – this.

        “Also MW sometimes knows the story or at least basic facts behind ghosts, and sometimes she doesnโ€™t.” THIS. This is why I can’t believe the mini plots are supposedly to help her move on! She’s the one that tells us all about the ghosts and how they need help. She’s not learning anything she doesn’t already know and she’s not acting in a way she wouldn’t already.

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          Well, MW already knows all this, of course. Sheโ€™s not moving on because she DOESNโ€™T want to, not because she doesnโ€™t know how to. She knows sheโ€™s supposed to let go of her grudges, feelings, from her past; she didnโ€™t need the wedding ghost sequence to teach her that. She knows perfectly well sheโ€™s not supposed to harm humans in vengeance; she didnโ€™t need the room 13 ghost sequence to teach her that. Etc.etc.etc.

          The goddesses are scamming her into moving on, and she knows it, and sheโ€™s not happy about it.

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