I’ll now start to read the latest episodes.

As I recall, the ‘real’ world froze. I put real in quotes because there’s a possibility that a parallel world out there is having a manhwa about our ‘real’ world. But this theory may be bonkers because we would have a total of 5 worlds then, whereas the story is titles W: 4 worlds.

Nevertheless, it’s nice to think of the possibilities.

Episode 28 Commentary

#2 I see what you did here. If it has a Spanish subtitle, this must be alluding to Song-nim’s Memories of the Alhambra. Plus, this new character uses Park Shinhye’s headshot.

As we’ll see in #5, the phenomenon mentioned by the Correspondent refers to the time freeze in the real world. I hope we can understand why this is the case.

#5-#8

It’s interesting that Renbo can summon people from other manhwas. This is a new concept you have. Come to think of it. If the ‘real world’ and the world within the manhwas are actually parallel worlds as already established, it makes sense.

Having said that, how will this new development be used by Kangchul and Wangshin?

Having reached #19 at this point, our characters are in a panic. So many things are happening so fast that they don’t know how to respond. This is nice to read after a month.

I haven’t finished reading #21 at this point, but why do I have the impression that the character of the Queen of Darkness is the actual protagonist of the manhwa? It makes sense because that’s what Mi-ra intended. But this might contradict a bit the detail where the manhwa chapter ends whenever Wangshin learns a shocking information.

 #22

As to why these two are in darkness, is it possible that darkness in queen of darkness also pertains to a specific place of darkness? It seems strange that if time stopped, these two would be in a void or some unknown place.

…the creature from hell. At first, it reminds me of the image of the kyuubi, that creature from Naruto. But perhaps Japan and Korea had similar folklore.

Kyuubi also means 9-tailed fox as in Korea’s gumiho….

Relevant articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumiho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune

#23

Wangshin here is undergoing a mild version of an existential crisis. Initially thought of as the hero, we now see that he might not be the hero, or at least wasn’t intended to.

Soobong: ‘The real main character has always been the Queen of Darkness.’

The earlier parts of this episode hinted at this conclusion. Perhaps, the conflict of visions between Mira and Yonhee led to this confusion on who is the main character of Queen of Darkness.

Anyway, looking back to W, we know that the main character can be changed. CMIIW. When the villain took over W, he became the main character and KC became the villain so to speak that he was in danger of disappearing.

What if the next step is to make Wangshin the hero of Queen of Darkness?

Going back to the ‘real’ world in #24, we are still unclear on what’s going on.

Anyway, back to KC and DY ‘hell’ scene, it’s an interesting scene and has lots of things I can comment about.

But I’m more interested on how they ended there. If Mira has lost control of stuff due to the time freeze, I find it hard to believe that she put these two into this sort of illusion room.

#27 brilliant! Another one of your retcon, this time on that truck. It was one of my favourite scenes in W.

#29 now we seem to get this idea that ‘narrative laws’ trump ‘physical laws.’

This seems plausible if the manhwa world like W, Butterfly Girl, and Queen of Darkness are fictional places that happened to become alive.

But I think this idea is too much to handle if we hold the idea that these worlds are parallel dimensions, and that a manhwa allows us to manipulate the physical reality there even temporarily.

And this is probably the reason why casual watchers of W tend to label it as full of so-called plotholes. There’s just too many to take. And Ms Song leaves some details or explanations in the open to let us fill in the gaps.

If that’s the case, either we become amazed with it, or trash it like many people do.

#33

I really appreciate this added detail regarding imagination. It opens some philosophical can of worms.

Doyoon touched on ‘complex ideas’ as explained by John Locke. Complex ideas may not exist in the real world, but the stuff that it is made of comes from the real world. The example given by Locke is a golden mountain. A mountain exists in the real world, so is gold. But not a golden mountain, which only exists in the imagination.

I get this sense, as KC understands it, that the use of imagination by the artist must be at a high level that the explanation of ‘complex ideas’ ala Locke seems insufficient. It’s as though they are created ex nihilo.

Anyway, whatever the explanation, KC feels that remaining in that place is dangerous.

#34 YJ’s baby did not freeze. I wonder why.

#44 before I move to #45, I remember asking that perhaps in one of the episodes, we’ll get a meta-narrative so to speak on why manhwas can become alive. Perhaps with the place called ‘Imagination’ around, we are one step closer to it.

#52 we end with YJ on the verge of reuniting with KC.

Conclusion 

This is a hard episode to read. You’re already juggling 5 or so balls then someone threw 3 or more to you, and you’re hard pressed trying to keep up. That’s what it feels like.

In the previous episodes, you felt the tension because of the different events happening so fast.

But in this episode, the danger is gone for now, but you are left groping and trying to understand WTF is going on. There are moments that previously held theories seem to be shattered, and new phenomena requires new and better theories to explain and account for.

I hope Episode 29 clears some of the things that confuse me in this episode.

• • Enchanteur

    Tuesday 23rd May 2023 at 23:43
    

    Hello, welcome back.

    #2

    Yes, I needed a place with a lake. I searched for lakes in Korea, and found this one, a tourist place. From idea to idea, I put a gag with Ren-Bo who always creates clumsiness (or disasters), and I took a tourist guide... So Park Shin-Hye. Of course, Spanish. Probably she's Hee-Ju from MOTA. ^^

    Sometimes I put gags with the extras. In episode 7, there is a scene between Han Hyo-Joo and the hairdresser, actress Song Hye Kyo. Out, in 2016, her drama "descendant of the sun" came out the same year as W. I didn't like the drama much, but it was over-hyped, making shadow to W. To get even, in this scene, Hyo-Joo gives the hairdresser a hard time. ahah. That's petty. 

     

    #19

    To 19. No comments, I take this as positive, in the sense that while being caught in the reading, we forget the time. They have enough to go crazy about. I hope you enjoyed the funny interactions with Ren-Bo, who never really has her feet on the ground.

     

    #21

    Extrapolation of W. The bad guys can summon Yeon-Joo. Here I use the same thing in reverse. Although he is not the main protagonist, Wang Shin has enough weight in the story to cause a chapter ending, affecting the person he summons. 

    In episode 26 (I think), Kang Chul and Do-Yoon see that Wang Shin doesn't cause chapter ending, because his chapter endings only affect Yoon-Hee. That's why they want to convince him to open his portal. This fails and Soo-Bong reveals here why. And so... a few episodes later, this time shortly after, the explanation of the cliffhanger episode 26. Sooner or later, it ends up clarified. 

    But maybe Song Jae-Jung would have been satisfied with the manhwa image of Wang Shin and Cha Yu-Sun and thought "but come on, it's obvious, the audience has everything it needs to guess" or "I have to keep mysteries, so people will want to watch the drama again and find the solution"... Anyway, I told you that it was possible to guess. I didn't lie. :-)

     

    #22

    Yes, same traditions of Korea and Japan. That's why I didn't want to take the devil from the Catholic bible, but a devil from Korean traditions.

     

    #27

    This flashback is used for the further explanation of the narrative laws. Why use it. I need "fresh" images because just two men talking in the dark gets visually boring. But also... maybe it's luck or because I rewatched the drama several times, I had noticed the inconsistency about time not restarting at the same time. I don't know if it was intended by the director. It's not in the script. But maybe it was accidental, just a way to make the action on screen. Whatever the real reason is, I used this inconsistency to make it coherent and related to what is happening in the drama. 

    As Oh Sung-Moo draws the car and the truck, but the image is erased, it's like a change in the script. So, as Kang Chul says, to define this by a time stop is imprecise. It's a narrative law. And in fact, the whole concept of W season 1 can also be explained this way.

     

    #33

    I don't know John Locke. Just some philosophical ideas I have, rather logical. In line with the story, where artistic creation is central. In my first version they talk more about that, but I kept only two or three essential lines because it doesn't fit well in a drama. 

    In this scene, when Kang Chul says "from beyond", it correlates with what Song Jae-Jung says in episode 15, when Yeon-Joo asks her where pure ideas come from.

     

    #34

    Yeon-Joo says it in the scene, when she talks to the baby. They are half-fiction.

     

    About conclusion.

    I had the impression that the episode was slow. But in fact there are a lot of scenes that end in mysteries and that are intertwined. But also a lot of meaning, concepts, explanations, discoveries. And I realize while reading that it goes very fast in what the characters say. Like an avalanche. So maybe in reality it is really fast-paced and difficult to read. Only, if I left more time for all this, I'm afraid it would be boring and filled with redundant and a bit useless things. Not to mention that it delays the moment when we can understand something about it.

    I really like your analogy of juggling 5 balls and having 3 more. That's the feeling I had during episode 8 of W. I take that as a success! :-D

    It feels like Song Jae-Jung when she goes too fast. Everything seems obvious to me, but I lose track of what the audience can assume, because at this point, there are a lot of mysteries, and no clear answer at the end of the episode. Although many mysteries were nevertheless clarified during, but at a speed too high to assimilate. All this is done to make the audience amazed (and me first), but the audience also risks to trash-it. T T

     

    About work.

    A lot of revision here. In the way the scenes are linked, different from the first version. Even cut scenes. And the first two news to put more suspense.

    I continue the revisions of the following episodes, which are linked from 32 to 36. Long to rewrite for various reasons that will probably be apparent when reading. I finished 32 to 34. But this requires an editing phase, and a thinking about keeping some lines (depending on episodes 35 and 36, so I don't know yet what decision to make). 

    As I was exhausted after doing these 3 episodes, I took the time to look for some images for the 32. It relaxed me. Large images, which don't require as much work as the dialogue vignettes. Just to get some pictures of characters or places, it makes me more happy to proofread with that. I did that for this episode 28 too, when I wasn't sure about the new outline of the 32+ episodes.