june 12 2023 : best served cold (kim jong-geon)

best served cold was fucking insane. i found it because one of my twitter mutuals retweeted a sexy panel from it and i was bored and i ended up reading all 70 chapters over two nights because it was so fucking insane. it felt like i was watching, as ho-yeon would put it, a "tacky revenge drama." i'm normally not into kdramas or like romance movies or anything but literally every single panel of this yuri webtoon made me feel like i was on a rollercoaster ride that just never ended.

first of all: the plot was so intricate but also so cleanly tied together, it's unreal. the author had to juggle so many characters and all of their complex relationships with each other, their complex backstories (that many of them weren't even aware of!) with each other, and then find ways to make them all react in-character to the crazy knowledge that just kept dropping on them??? it's genuinely so impressive that she managed to keep the plot so tight -- making sure that every character had their role to play in the revenge plot and that everybody was connected with each other in believable ways. i'm absolutely in love with the characterization and all the character parallels that existed here -- i mean like, just off the top of my head from when i finished reading:

• jia "cheating" on hae-na and leaving her feeling abandoned, the same way that jongwoo cheats on minjoo and makes her feel abandoned
• ...and then jia ruining minjoo's relationship with her husband to make herself feel better, only for hae-na to ruin jia's relationship with minjoo to make herself feel better
• jia starting off seeing stoic and calm, but actually being slightly immature and emotional -- while minjoo was desperate and seemed weak/clingy at first, but in reality, was highly composed and intelligent when thinking up her plan and sorting out her feelings
• song-yi and ho-yeon being exact opposites -- the former being highly responsible, the latter being highly flirtatious and narcissistic, but both gravitating towards "taking care" of people for their own sakes (minjoo and hae-na, respectively)

jongwoo, to be honest, did in fact feel like a super-generic rich guy trope that existed for the sake of pushing the main GL drama forward and providing an incentive for minjoo to become "her true self" but i don't even blame the author for this. he worked as a standard spoiled brat of a guy -- it was realistic enough, and the main focus was on how all these women kept fucking up each other's lives, anyway.

speaking of fucking up each other's lives: the revenge plot itself was SUCH a good subversion of the typical "revenge drama" trope, i literally could not stop reading because i kept wanting to know what would happen next. it was so crazy to see all of these characters developing over the course of the story, all of whom ultimately realize -- after being caught up in this tacky revenge drama -- that revenge is something taken to satisfy your personal satisfaction, not anybody else's. jia was taking revenge for her sister's sake, not for herself -- and she realizes this, eventually falling in love with minjoo and doing anything she can to make minjoo's life easier. minjoo was encouraged by song-yi to take revenge -- justifying it through the fact that she thought jongwoo deserved some justice, but ultimately encouraged because song-yi said that she should "do it if it's the only thing that'd make her feel better. even though ho-yeon was a bitch and only following along to be entertained, even she told hae-na to take the money and ruin jia's life for herself -- because, in reality, jia really had told hae-na that she'd been using her since the beginning.

even sae-ah, the supposed "root" of it all, tells jia not to get caught up on her, wanting to see jia flourish as her own person and live for herself above all else. and when she smashes her mug over jongwoo at the very end, it's as a warning not to touch her sister, not because she's trying to get revenge for the blackmail/cheating that jongwoo had attempted to pull on her in the past.

they were all selfish and they were all taking revenge for their own, selfish purposes, only for the people actually involved in revenge to develop feelings and affection for the people around them -- jia with minjoo, hae-na for jia. most authors write these revenge plots like people are just cold-hearted bitches who don't retain any semblance of attachment to the people who used them, but that's not realistic at all!! feelings are complex and the author captures all of that complexity SO WELL -- when hae-na showed up at the end and helps jia/minjoo by filming jongwoo's assault, i legit made the pogface in real life. there were multiple times throughout this story where i was like "oh my god. no fucking way." or out loud whispering "they're so fucked up. they're gonna get caught. this is so fucking crazy" it was legit unreal.

most fucked-up toxic GL kdrama of all time i'm genuinely obsessed with it. the middle was the best -- with just realization after realization hitting the reader like a sack of bricks every time -- and even though i totally understand how some people could find the ending to be rushed, personally, i was pretty satisfied with it! it felt like all the holes in the drama had closed up and then jia and minjoo's relationship was just the little bow on top to make it all better.

plus there were some panels that genuinely made me laugh my fucking ass off like the silly goofy reaction panels were always so floppy the author's funny art is so cute. i can't stop thinking about how the author put jia into minecraft