📍 Working-Class Mr. Ahn’s Unscheduled Visits to Dr. Yeon’s Clinic continues…
⚠️ Just a casual warning – if you’re following along with Asuka and Jen’s fictional arc and delusion interior series, consider yourself warned. Everything under my fanfiction tab is totally fictional. There’s no need to get overly serious about any of it.
The Song of Achilles
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
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’ll definitely cross-reference it with the English version through the link you sent me later)
Thetis
First, a funny observation…
Thetis disapproves of Patroclus, right?
And it made me laugh so hard because it completely overlapped with those cliche K-dramas where a wealthy mother from Gangnam’s District 8 (Byuksan High is in this district too) – the kind who wears fluttering skirts – looks down on the commoner daughter-in-law her son has brought home, insisting he’ll die if he can’t marry her.
I couldn’t stop laughing while reading.
I have a feeling I’m going to be chattering to you endlessly about The Song of Achilles, but if I had to pick the most romantic lines, they would be:
When Achilles says to Patroclus, “Now I know how to make you follow me”
And “Have I told you how much I love this part of you?”
They were truly romantic, ha…
Something in my chest suddenly melted last night.
I’m sure it’s the same in the English version, but:
“Have I told you how much I love this part too?”
“And here?”
And when Patroclus says, “Yes, you have. Tell me again”
My hands holding the book went limp at that moment hahahaha
Though it doesn’t specify exactly where, it must have started from Patroclus’s ear and gradually descended all the way down to between his thighs.
The Korean translation was poetic and beautiful enough, but I imagine in English each word must glitter like grains of sand.
There are no pornographic passages whatsoever, yet it’s sufficiently noble and erotic – the scenes where the two boys exchange sexual feelings were tart yet sweet, like a pomegranate.
Now I understand why you praised the author so highly.
And this will probably already be a controversial passage among many fans, but the chapter where Deidameia seduces Patroclus – I think it’s going to be highly contentious.
At the point where I’ve read more than two-thirds, her intentions and motivations haven’t been revealed, and I don’t think there’ll be an opportunity for them to be revealed by the ending.
Deidameia
But what truly astonished me was this: I swear I had no idea this book even existed until you introduced it to me. Yet when I saw Deidameia’s seduction with its ambiguous motives, I saw Oh Beom overlapping – the 3D rendering you and I painted in our arc.
I suppose this context is the kind of delusion one can easily swim in anywhere.
Perhaps that’s what Deidameia was like too.
To borrow her words, she might have wanted to discover the reason why the “grotesquely” unattractive Patroclus became Achilles’ soulmate by sleeping with him.
But when their intimacy ended, perhaps she was disappointed because she simply couldn’t understand the reason.
Your expression was so poetic – “How he yearns for Si-eun’s stories of Suho, piecing together an imaginary life with him through these scraps hard won by subterfuge.”
Perhaps that was her motivation too…
Patroclus
I’ll have to finish the book to know for sure, but I suspect the reason Achilles chose Patroclus was because he recognised at a glance that Patroclus was someone who could be a fellow capable of exchanging souls with him, to the point of giving his life for him.
And recently, a subscriber pointed out that Oh Beom saw Suho as “larger than life”. I agree.
When the bike accident happened, Oh Beom’s face watching from a distance, shocked that this invincible hyung could be stranded like that – it’s so vivid. He never would have conceived that Suho could be as weak as he was, weak enough to become a vegetable dependent on a respirator.
And if Suho had died from that accident…
Beomseok would have self-harmed. He would have begged Si-eun to kill him first. I completely agree with what you said.
It’s already like this in the filmverse, but Oh Beom is truly the heart of this story.
While reading The Song of Achilles, I found myself wondering what Si-eun and Suho’s first kiss might have been like.
(Rolling out the carpet of imagination again on the train ride home from work hahaha)
Oil Boiler
The only legacy Grandma left behind.
A crumbling house.
Before starting to live together with Si-eun, the first thing Suho would have done was use money saved from part-time jobs to repair the bathroom and replace the boiler. Until then, that house had been structured to burn dangerous “coal briquettes” for heat.
But one winter day, the oil boiler suddenly stops working.
So these two young otters suddenly find themselves spreading an electric heating pad on the freezing floor of the main room to spend the night. Even with the electrically warmed heat rising from the pad, it’s not enough to overcome the bitter cold, so without either initiating first, they embrace to warm each other’s body heat, and naturally their noses touch, and then naturally their lips meet.
But neither knows how to kiss, so they just fumble with their lips pressed together until they both burst out laughing. Hahaha, I imagined that scene.
If one of them masturbated while looking at the other first, I’m convinced it would have been Si-eun. Because Suho’s sleeping face was so beautiful, he couldn’t help himself.
This is just my headcanon, but unlike Oh Beom, I think part of the reason Si-eun didn’t enter that single-patient room when Suho was a sleeping beauty was because of this – afraid his desire would overflow.
Come to think of it, Achilles also had such a delicate face that he could pass as a woman without dissonance. I’ve always thought of Si-eun as having a really handsome, somewhat solid appearance, while Suho is “pretty”
Ah…
And recently, those wretched media outlets pulled another stunt. Honestly, who would seriously criticise Hyunwook’s ceremonial pitch at that stadium? Most people would just think “okay” and move on. Of course, there are miserable, idle wretches everywhere, and their criticism is always loud, but most people would dismiss it as nothing.
But the media, always needing something to bite, slaps on the label of “controversy” and pushes it to the centre of attention…
I can somewhat understand why celebrities suffer from panic disorders.
If you look at GD’s way of speaking, even international fans whose native language isn’t Korean will catch that his speech is quite awkward and slow. Because every word, every particle of speech, becomes controversial, he chose to speak slowly, even if it’s unnatural. Previously, GD posted a photo on Instagram saying, “I can’t handle these people anymore” – but no matter what, you can’t handle the masses.
Asuka, I plan to read every book you’ve recommended.
I’m already delighted.
Call on me anytime you need a bricklayer to add local colour.
Yours,
Jen
P.S. Oh, you might have seen this in K-dramas – there’s an expression for men with delicate, pretty features like Suho. We say they “look like a gisaeng’s brother” (gisaeng being similar to a geisha). When someone hears that description, it means they’re truly handsome hahahaha
and one more,
The blanket they huddled under that night when the boiler broke was one of those thick quilted comforters – the one grandma had used since her newlywed days
The fat bodies of bees
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.
Archie and Pat
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?***
lager than life
“And recently, a subscriber pointed out that Oh Beom saw Suho as “larger than life” I agree.
When the bike accident happened, Oh Beom’s face watching from a distance, shocked that this invincible hyung could be stranded like that – it’s so vivid. He never would have conceived that Suho could be as weak as himself, weak enough to become a vegetable dependent on a respirator.”
—This is a brilliant insight. Thanks for sharing.
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
Want to see where Scheherazade’s tale begins? → Click here to jump to Part 1