Fat Bodies of Bees
Working-Class Mr. Ahn's Unscheduled Visits to Dr. Yeon's Clinic continues...
Missed Part 1? Start here → PART 1
Warning: this post deals with some heavier psychological topics and dark fictional elements. Everything here is totally fictional.
Don't Even Get Me Started
J: Hi Asuka, don't even get me started — when I steal a moment at work to read your emails or write back, I furrow my brow as hard as I possibly can, sending out signals like "speak to me now and I will crush you" hahahaha. I see you've been using the exact same tactic hahaha.
Song of Achilles — Read in One Sitting
J: I know about The Song of Achilles... wow...
I borrowed it from the library on my way home from work yesterday, and after showering that night, I devoured more than half of it in two hours. You were absolutely right — I read it in one sitting. I totally fell into the turbulent waters of The Song of Achilles and it only took me two days. I read 2/3 the first day, finished it the next day. It's been so long since I've seen love portrayed so lyrically that I just couldn't put the book down.
After Pat died (damn Apollo...) when his spirit kept going as the narrator, I was bawling. When Briseis tried to wash Pat's body and Achilles screamed "I didn't give you permission to touch him" — even my nose was stinging.
I thought Achilles's son (Pyrrhus...) was truly his grandmother's — that most poisonous sea-bitch Thetis's — grandson. Achilles was half-god but honestly, except for his athletic abilities, all his circuits were basically human. But Pyrrhus, this little shit haha — wasn't even half-god yet he already acted like one, so arrogant and irritating. Later when Thetis and Pat's ghost talked and she mentioned he was killed (he totally deserved it for the shit he pulled), I felt vindicated. Pat even said he was "glad" when he heard about his death...
Compared to Archie and Pat already knowing their fated destiny, the most tragic one was still... Briseis, I thought. She even told Pat she'd be fine with him keeping Archie as his lover if only she could have his child and build a family with him. More than any other scene, when Briseis surprise-kissed Pat and it said she was waiting for Pat's "judgment" — my imagination went wild and my whole face turned red. But imagining the honeyed anticipation in her beautiful eyes, her heart pounding, her deep admiration for Pat as she waited for his positive feedback — that scene brought tears to my eyes too.
And when Archie got jealous hearing about Pat wanting to have a child with Briseis — honestly that was too cute. Except for having faster feet than regular humans, Archie was just... such an innocent, bright puppy of a boy.
If I had to pick my favourite passage in this beautiful novel that feels like it contains all four seasons, it would be when the two boys in Chiron's cave were far away from that surveillance telescope and could freely make love. Summer.
Archie and Pat's love was undeniable, and as the author described, they didn't hide things or lie to each other. Instead of jealousy and resentment, even when those feelings arose, they ultimately controlled their emotions for each other's sake and devoted themselves again...
While watching Weak Hero, I've told subscribers this often — that I was breathing in the scent of real love again after forgetting about it for so long. Reading The Song of Achilles, I felt that the whole time. Among all the emotions and attributes that come with love, it's been so long since Weak Hero that I encountered another work reminding me that love is ultimately connected to sacrifice, and that sacrifice is the most sublime thing.
After reading this, I finally decided to upload a video I'd been sitting on. I commented that I'd received the most questions about whether Suho and Si-eun were in love, that I needed subscribers' voices so it took a while, but I was finally happy to post it.
Both works... how do I say this — I've had times when I loved someone and felt okay sacrificing a bit for them, sometimes that sacrifice itself made me feel richer, you know? But it feels like so much media focuses only on love's byproducts — jealousy, hate, resentment — or talks only about sex. These days people see sacrificial love as naive. Yet coincidentally, both works I've been obsessed with all year deal with love that moves the audience through sacrifice. Like I've rediscovered the scent of a perfume I'd forgotten.
Traces of Suho and Si-eun
J: Just as a reader having fun, but yes, like you said, without a doubt I noticed traces of Suho, Si-eun, and Beomseok in Archie and Pat. It would've been harder NOT to find them.
Remember that scene? In the Weak Hero intro (I heard Director Yoo didn't want to include this intro — kudos to his final decision and sense to include it), when Suho, Si-eun, and Beomseok are walking up that hill to Byeoksan High in that order. Si-eun walks up looking at the ground with those melancholic eyes as usual, while Suho radiates that sigma energy...
I bet when the girls Suho bedded during those five years Si-eun was deployed as a military doctor in Iraq wanted engagement, he gave them "exactly that expression" hahaha. Hands shoved in his pockets, staring at the ground, not saying anything — and the girl who'd already fallen hard for him would turn bright red, demanding he say something, right?
But really, if you think about it, the girls were the ones who actively pursued Suho first for a one-night stand, and Suho just went along. In the morning when he wakes up and carefully removes the hand wrapped around his waist from last night's partner, gets out of bed, puts on his underwear, jeans, stretches his arms while putting on his t-shirt — and she wakes up at that sound.
"You're leaving now? At least have breakfast with me," she'd say, wrapping her arms around Suho's waist.
Without responding, Suho shoves his phone from the nightstand into his left jeans pocket and calmly walks out her front door, heading leisurely toward Anguk-dong.
And the next day, he's at his first-floor office reviewing contracts when that girl — all made up and hair done — walks in. (She knew the place because her parents are Mr Ahn's client.) For days, she'd cling to him, whining about whether he'd consider continuing their relationship, and each time Suho would respond with that same expressionless school commute face, silently working on tile colour combinations. Any reasonable person would quit out of pride, but the woman who intuitively knows she'll never meet another man like this in her life keeps wrapping her arms around Suho's arm, pleading.
Suho doesn't push her away, just remains unresponsive, and when she gets hysterical, that's when he'd pull out his final card — one of the thousand-plus photos of Si-eun saved on his phone, specifically one of them hugging and kissing.
"This is my boyfriend."
(Politely using formal speech, like addressing a client.) (Even, he's not saying "He is my partner.")
Wait, I snapped back to reality and realised I wrote a whole fiction of light fluff? Hahahaha. No matter how much a woman swallows her pride to cling to a handsome man, Mr Ahn — if he says his real lover is a man, even someone with no pride left would have no choice but to give up.
Newton's Mantra, One More Time
J: In our deluluverse, during those five years Si-eun was deployed, could sweaty, hot-blooded Suho really go years in monk mode without scratching that itch... When I built that brick wall, honestly I thought it was impossible hahaha.
And I think it was the same for Pat and Archie in The Song of Achilles. Sure, Archie slept with Deidameia because his control-freak mom gaslit and blackmailed him, but honestly Pat also couldn't really control his urges, and I felt that if Briseis had been a bit more aggressive in seducing him, he would've had sex with her regardless of his love for Achilles.
But interestingly, I've built detailed bricks about Suho's nighttime mates during those five Si-eun-less years, yet somehow I don't think Si-eun felt much of that itch. Or maybe whenever the itch came, he used that Newton's mantra technique he'd already built up during school days to control his urges.
In your previous fiction, you wrote about something Suho secretly remembers about Si-eun without him knowing — maybe Si-eun's milkshake volume is way more than his own. Scientifically impossible, but maybe Si-eun really "held it in" to pour it all out in front of the person he loves most in the world. And I've built bricks that Si-eun might have some germaphobia. Being a doctor too, but also mixing bodies with someone other than Suho wouldn't be easy for him. Yet on the other hand, like Pat, I felt Si-eun would be sexy even with a woman, of course in our deluluverse haha.
A novel written 3000 years ago... It feels like light that flew in from a star light-years away. So in the Iliad, Archie and Pat's relationship was more ambiguous, I see. I can vividly picture those self-proclaimed experts' jealous criticism of Madeleine Miller. Looking at the same myth and writing something so beautiful and lyrical that makes readers finish it in one day — how jealous must they have been? And Plato and Shakespeare agreed with the romantic interpretation — could there be more reliable "oppas" than these two?
Most Poisonous Sea-Bitch
Asuka: Hi Jennie, I see you have waded into the turbulent waters of The Song of Achilles.
Ah Thetis Thetis, most poisonous sea-bitch. She disliked Patroclus enough to lift him by the throat and choke him because he stole her son's first kiss, their lips meeting briefly like "the fat bodies of bees." They had such a giddy summer crush on each other. Oh Thetis, if only you knew — even before Pat tasted Archie's honeyed mouth, he already took his heart. I think Thetis spared Pat only because she sensed Achilles would unravel into deranged, self-harming violence if she had killed him. Not all heartbreak was caused by her, but much of the bitter fruit that bloomed all over this Greek garden came from seeds planted by her. Thetis does have one redeeming gesture at the end, granted grudgingly to the boys and closing the story in a flowering of blinding beauty.
But I still hope her immortal arse dies from global warming or something.
Yes, I can totally see her cast in a modern setting as some toxic matriarch, mother of a clueless chaebol. She pesters him to take over the family business and is murderously disapproving and scheming towards the lowly love of his life. Like watery Thetis spying on them continuously with her divine eye, her counterpart Chaebol Thetis would do the equivalent Beomseokian thing, hiring a team of private detectives to snap pics of her son and his boyfriend.
Come to think of it, at some point in the bookverse, the boys must have said 'ah to Hades with her' and openly made love while Thetis watched and gripped her magic oceanic telescope so hard the lens cracked. You know the part where they reunited after Thetis kidnapped her own son, and they "drank deeply" from each other? I think that drinking session, as well as Archie playing 'have I told you I like this part?' with Pat, must have caused her veins to almost burst.
Ambiguous in the Iliad
Asuka: I think you will no doubt notice traces of Suho, Si-eun and Beomseok within Archie and Pat. The overlap isn't total of course, but there is enough of a confluence to make me sigh. Archie probably treated Deidameia like how deluluverse Suho treated the girls he bedded in the years without Si-eun. In fact, it's probably worse: at least with Suho it was consensual, Mr Ahn wanting to relieve an itch. Archie was tricked and blackmailed by his control-freak mother. "I did not like it. I wanted it to be over," he had confessed to an inwardly hurt Pat. The deed finished, he just ignores Deida, even though she had already conceived his child.
Interestingly, in the original story written at least 3000 years ago, The Iliad, Achilles and Patroclus had a more ambiguous relationship, really like filmverse Suho and Si-eun. They could have been bed mates or not — why would I care when true love is there? Madeleine Miller interprets their love romantically. She has received criticism for this (probably from jealous classics scholars and academic translators). But you know who else reads their relationship romantically? Probably the greatest, most sensitive poet and philosophical thinker of old Greece, Plato himself, who lived 2500 years ago. And the greatest of all writers in English, William Shakespeare also agrees with this romantic reading. With artists of such transcendental, legendary levels giving her support, and with her churning out some of the most gorgeous sentences imaginable, who is to say Miller is wrong?
Freezing Otters Under One Blanket
Asuka: Thanks also for creating the "freezing otters under one blanket" scene. That was so cute I squealed oh my god!!! And so beautiful too. I will remember it like Si-eun breathing in the dawn air of Seoul, September, and Suho.
Didn't Archie and Pat have something like this on Mount Pelion, when Archie awkwardly hinted that in lord Chiron's cave, Thetis's spyglass was blind? Then Pat tried to sleep with his heart throbbing. But he simply could not, and when he turned silently to admire Archie's sleeping face, as he had done innumerable times before, he found Archie already waiting.
Literature like this of course inspires fan art of the most talented levels. There are even fan cartoons. If you can, do check out the simple but simply wonderful 2 min toon, "Mystery of love, The Song of Achilles Animatic" by uploader gigi. It covers the first 100 pages or so, no spoilers to ruin your reading pleasure.
Yours, Asuka, melting from the heat of all my favorite things in one email.
Who is Jennie? Bricklayer. Local correspondent for the Yeon Clinic deluluverse. A sous chef who checks whether the soup actually tastes like Seoul. A specialist who designs this kitchen to hold more than Suho's coma — philosophy, history, society, culture, stacked one recipe at a time.
Who is Asuka? Head nurse and main chef of the Yeon Clinic. A Scheherazade who sings the Song of Achilles she found shelved next to a book on Zen Buddhist masters. Fluent in several languages, conversant in single malts and the precise emotional damage of Weak Hero Class 1. Signs off as ASL. (Always starch linen.)
This free ebook will ruin you. In the best way. A character analysis of Si-eun, Su-ho and Beom-seok that goes beyond what subtitles can carry. Take it — it's free → DOWNLOAD HERE
This post was originally published on Jennie's blog in the autumn of 2025. The original blog has since moved to Blogger due to hosting changes — welcome to the new home.
Comments
Post a Comment