Remember some episodes ago when he said ‘I alone decide your fate. Everything you have belongs to me. I decide whether you live or die. Never forget that!’

BEST BOYFRIEND MATERIAL EVER!!!

#redsleeve

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    Still haven’t watched this week’s eps, but, yes, that was an awful scene. Still, that was probably the frame of mind most males had at the time. Hong Deokro even suggests that San should rape her, the little turd!
    I’m not justifying San’s behaviour –
    I’m just saying that the depiction is likely to be historically accurate.
    Drama romanticizes a relationship that to our contemporary eyes is based on crass power imbalance and is just plain wrong (royal concubines are glorified prisoners). This said, my mind is flexible enough to recognize that real life San and Deokim possibly felt real love for each other, in spite of all the caveats – because that was their reality, and because people are complicated whatever time they live in.
    Besides, acknowledging the power imbalance serves as a good justification for Deokim to refuse him!

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      The power imbalance is too much even from a sageuk standard and this isn’t my first sageuk. I am dropping this. The forced kiss made me super uncomfortable.

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        Honestly, the show lost me once they brought in the child bride. I’ll finish because I’m already on episode 15 and it’s only 17 episodes long. But I regret that this is Junho’s come back drama.

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          Oh god there is a child bride??? Thank god I stopped where I stopped! I understand it was ‘true’ to the time but let’s not glamorise something that doesn’t need to be glamorised.

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            You remember Doek-ro’s younger sister? Yes? She came as a concubine, thinking it’ll help his brother in some way! What is worst is that she went into depression thinking she won’t be of any help to his brother after one night. She says to deok-im something like ‘Im useless’ can’t help’!!
            Later she just dies! Poor kiddo!🥺

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            Yep, a child bride plus discussion of San having sex with her. He doesn’t do anything, but the mere discussion of raping a child is disturbing enough.

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    If you think this is bad, there’s a scene in episode 15 where he explicitly threatens to rape her (they use the phrase “bed” him, but the euphemism isn’t fooling anybody) as punishment for her “insolence”.

    Yeah. I don’t know what the writer was smoking, but this isn’t a romance. The genre for this show is horror.

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    Ok, I watched EPs 13 and 14. This is not good. It goes beyond historical context: I was going with San learning to think of Deokim as a real person instead of a prop who’s there to satisfy his emotional/other needs, but there’s just too much misogyny built into the story. I totally HATED the Hong arc. And that forceful kiss should have stayed in 80s soap operas where it came from. So awful!

    I’m sad because I like Junho, but this is devolving into a hate-watch 😭

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