Another omegaverse story riddled with problems

I can see what the author wanted to do with this one, but s/he just couldn't quite manage to execute it in a sensible way. It's too bad, because I don't necessarily dislike the setup and possessive top trope, and I do wish to read interesting and different things in omegaverse (alpha/alpha), but everything was so sloppily done here that it really isn't worth a read unless you happen to like these specific elements. And even then, maybe not...

(spoilers)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Problems:

* Alpha/alpha fated pair makes no sense on the context of omegaverse mechanics. I'm not going to say it "can't happen", but if you're going to do this in your story, then it has to be explained how it's possible.

* Omegaverse was relatively wasted here in that rut doesn't matter, heat doesn't matter, they can't have kids, no omegas were major players trying to interfere with either alpha by using pheromones, no other fated partner of one of the two alphas showed up to mess things up, etc.

* The parents of a chaebol wouldn't be accepting of a male partner for their son if the pairing can't produce heirs. Some variants of omegaverse allow alpha/alpha pairs to produce children, but it was never explained in this story as being possible. Anyway, if it's never mentioned that it can (and it wasn't in this story), then alpha/alpha pairs can't produce kids. It's a problem that Heeyeon never had to deal with parental pressure related to this.

* Seowon was intentionally depicted by the author as not liking Heeyeon at all, all the way until midway through chapter 25. Before that, never once does Seowon express either verbally or mentally the desire to be with Heeyeon, sexually or emotionally. He's always going out of his way to avoid him, and have nothing to do with him. Even though Heeyeon pays Seowon for his time and yaoi hole, this is basically a stockholm/rape-to-love situation since Seowon didn't really want it.

* Fated pairing/name appearing on body thing was randomly shoved in at the end in order to wrap the story up quickly by forcing the leads to get together when Seowon still did not want to. There was no setup for this mechanic at all.

* Name appearing on body of a fated partner was explored some in Pian Pian, which is not omegaverse. Because this sort of mechanic can work in a non-ABO story as evidenced by Pian Pian, this is just further proof that the omegaverse setting of this story was wasted.

* The ploy at the end where Heeyeon and that omega pretend to be a fated pair to make Seowon (and the omega's bf) jealous completely won't work on Seowon as characterized -- Seowon is not interested in Heeyeon and does everything he can to get away from Heeyeon, so Heeyeon finding his fated partner outside of Seowon would be good news for Seowon. But also, fated pairs are treated in omegaverse like unbreakable magic bonds; even if two people are in love with each other, and one of their fated partners (someone else) appears, their relationship is effectively over, unless they can manage to overcome the "magic" of the fated pairing, like in Shounen no Kyoukai. But in Shounen no Kyoukai, that's the whole point of the story, how hard it is to deny fate. If Heeyeon's fated partner appears and it's not Seowon, even if Heeyeon/Seowon were in a loving relationship at that time, that would spell the end for their relationship because a fated pair trumps all else, usually, in omegaverse. What I'm trying to say here is that this scheme doesn't work in either case; Heeyeon finding his fated partner (not Seowon) would end Heeyeon/Seowon's relationship whether or not Seowon liked Heeyeon already or not.

* Seowon's tragic backstory for why he has trust issues is set up but never paid off. He was never really shown as getting over his trust issues, there was never something that clicked with Heeyeon to inspire it or whatever, and the fate of Seowon's parents was never tied back in with the present-day plot, beyond a dismissive "oh that guy's in jail now because he tried to trick Heeyeon's dad too but got caught". That's a lazy "took care of it off-screen" thing to do for something so important that completely defined the main character's current circumstances and personality. It would've been way better if the story made Heeyeon the son of the guy who screwed over Seowon's family. Then, from some perspectives, Heeyeon's family's money is actually Seowon's money, and Heeyeon paying Seowon to spend time with him is actually Heeyeon giving Seowon money he's rightfully owed, and changes their dynamic completely.

* How is it the case that Seowon owes someone money when the guy who screwed his family over is in jail? Never once do we see Seowon's debtors, or who he has to pay all this nebulous money to. Or even how much he owes, and how close he is to paying it off. Especially after some of the crazy deposits we see from Heeyeon. Was that USD $100,000 that one time? What exactly does he have to pay off that might be more than that? If someone paid me $100,000 to have sex with them, then did have sex with me, I'd be sending that money off to clear up my debt right now. This was all very half-baked.

* A huge wasted opportunity here was the perfect setup/circumstances for a seke omegaverse couple. When you have two alphas in a relationship with each other, what could be more natural or make more sense than to have them be sekes? Instead, Seowon is basically just treated in the story like he's an omega, even though he isn't.

* Several instances of lack of establishing shot for a new scene, which is jarring to the readers, who must flail for a bit before realizing a new scene with a new setting is taking place.

* I realize the group that worked on this did so of their own free will at no cost to the readers, but... the translation/adaptation was difficult to mire through in places, especially toward the end, and it detracted from my ability to understand the characters and what was going on in the story at times. Some sentences didn't make any sense, and others were totally awkward, phrased in Korean-style phrasing instead of being adapted to english and how an english-speaker would talk. I'm not going to post examples here. If representatives of the group are interested in understanding specifics of what I mean to improve their scanlations, they should PM me directly. Anyways, the point I'm making is that the translation/adaptation made it difficult for me to understand some scenes, which took me right out of the story.



This next point gets its own section. Many tiresome shoujo cliches appear here that just add to the overall frustration with the plot. Here's a laundry list of some of them:

* Seme/top has peers drooling all over him constantly.

* Seme/top is also rich, w/status, is has tons of disposable income independently from his family from "stock trading" even though he's never shown to be stock trading. Making money from stock trading does require a lot of a person's time to research and watch the market, etc. This is just the author being lazy and not wanting to put a lot of thought into how he earns his money.

* Uke/bottom is an outcast and/or misunderstood by peers.

* Hosts... again.

* Seme/top has a cool/expensive car and drives it up to the front of the school like his personal parking spot is the curb in front of the classroom building instead of parking in a parking deck like a normal person. At least there was one instance where he was shown to park in a parking deck, but it was way at the end of the story.

* Drooling fans question why the top/seme would hang out with the loser bottom, as if its any of their business at all.

* Drooling fans question top/seme about his relationship with bottom, and seme/top actually responds, even though he's under no obligation to tell them anything or take orders from them. Rich and powerful people don't care what the unwashed masses think, and an alpha shouldn't either, in general.

* Top/seme lies to random drooling fan about his relationship with the bottom and the bottom just happens to overhear, causing drama. This random drooling fan isn't even a named character, and yet the author wastes time in the story to show Heeyeon explaining himself to Mr Unnamed Character, when Heeyeon should just ignore this idiot and tell him to buzz off, it's none of his business.

* Drooling fans thinking they have any claim on the top/seme they're all slobbering over, and only declaring that they had no chance when a magical fated pairing appears, and not because, you know, they respect the top/seme's choices.

* Arranged marriage meeting trope.

* Pretending to date someone else to make love interest jealous trope.

I'm sure there are others, but imma stop here. You get the point.


Despite all these issues, I did somehow like the setup and story, at least, up until the part where Heeyeon feels the need to explain himself to his drooling fans for why Seowon got out of his car that morning. The amount of tropeyness that ensued at this point and after just riddled me with frustration to the point where I barely forced my way to the end of the story. Send these authors off to writing 101 lessons, please, before they're given the responsibility of creating a comic. It's really such a waste to do a ton of art for a plot so bad I had to rate it a 2/5. I'm sure the author doesn't want to be wasting his/her time either.