The writing's a mess in this one

Note: I did read the whole thing

The writing's a mess here, but the author does have some few capabilities with it anyway.

Aside from the art being pretty good and visibly improving over the course of the series, the author is at least able to maintain a brisk pace throughout the entire run, all the way up until the very abrupt ending. The main character Kang Junho is generally likeable even if his character bears the cross of some of the most egregious writing problems.

I guess, since I do this so frequently, I may as well discuss some of the problems in this story. Although I probably don't have too many outside of what others have already said in the comments/topics/etc.
(spoilers; long)
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General:

- Lack of establishment of scenes. Some scenes occur in places you have no idea about, or where they are, for example, that basement-y warehouse-y place where the chairman is holding Jihoon at the end. Is it the basement of his mansion? Is it an unused warehouse on the school grounds? Who knows! And I'd also like to know how crazy-blue-hair happens to know.

- Jarringly weird flashback-flashforwards in many, many of the chapters. For example, a chapter will end on a cliffhanger, then the next chapter will show a character flashed forward a few hours regretting something they did, then it will flash back to what happened in the interim.

- Overuse of tropey/cliche things. Lee Kang is that typical high-octane top, and everyone he bones falls immediately in love with him (apparently including Junho). Parents killed by car crash. Evil aunt/uncle who take him in then blame him when they can't make it work. Don't-have-an-umbrella trope and getting-sick-in-the-rain trope. As an aside, it is so irritating when a comic leans so hard on a trope that is total superstition to make things happen in the plot, such as getting sick in the rain, which pretty much never happens in real life. How do these people take showers?

- Junho being a beefcake is all aesthetics, and was put in this story to satisfy a fetish, rather than for him to actually be strong/powerful. He should've been able to throw at least a couple of punches against Lee Kang before getting grappled and raped any of the many times he was determined to fight back.

- BL crazyworld stuff. Everyone's gay, like apparently Junho's friend from the baseball team is suddenly in love with the TA and is ok with boning him without any prior hints of this? Lee Kang thinking that no one will love him at the end of the comic despite everyone he boned being totally in love with him as stated in the story. Having sex everywhere in public and only getting caught when it's convenient for the plot. People knowing other peoples' phone numbers without them ever exchanging numbers. Lee Kang always noticing Kang Junho spying on him, but never vice-versa (I guess he has a Junho detector). And many, many more.

- Characters do things that make no sense. At the end, the chairman threatens to ruin Junho's life in front of Lee Kang, and then Lee Kang's strategy is to go to school and ignore Junho rather than tell him, and help him to protect himself. A beefcake (Lee Kang) being at all threatened by an old man with twiggy arms (the chairman) when the chairman seems to be threatening Jihoon by himself at the end of the story. Also, Junho going to help Lee Kang by himself at the end when he knows what happened to Jihoon's leg back in the day, getting attacked by a group of toughs. How about instead make Junho assemble all the beefcakes on the entire baseball and swim teams, give them all baseball bats, and take them with you? I think there's a pretty compelling argument to get some support out of them in this situation, even if there's some personal risk.

- This is an addendum to the above two, but: Do police not exist in this world? How about we call the police when Lee Kang rapes Junho, or when the chairman beats up Lee Kang, etc. How exactly did the chairman have Lee Kang's parent's killed anyway? I can't imagine the police are so inept as to not be able to tell the difference between intentional sabotage and a drunk driver (??)


Story specific problems:

- Lee Kang needs to be redeemed before Junho decides he's in love with him. Doing this out of order turns this from a redemption plot into a stockholm syndrome plot, which is no good.

- Kang Junho is both ineffective and inept throughout the entirety of his own story. All he can do is get mad, look like he's about the beat the stuffing out of Lee Kang, and then ... not do that at all and get raped instead. This happens repeatedly, and it's so aggravating. But it's not just the rapes, either. Junho's inept at coming up with any kind of revenge to ensnare Lee Kang in, or in otherwise improving his situation. He has no plan and can't think of one, and so his character just has to sit there and be at the mercy of everyone else in the story. The entire ending was orchestrated by swimming #2 crazy blue hair and Jihoon. We don't even get the satisfaction of Junho putting his foot down with Lee Kang and refusing his rapist-summons and telling him enough is enough. In fact, no one has a moment of putting their foot down and saying enough is enough in this story full of bad actors, other than maybe Jihoon (who is also ineffective throughout). This item in particular sucks so much worse because Junho is the main character, and throughout the story we desperately want to see him make any progress at all in getting out of his horrible situation. But he just can't seem to muster it.

- The author trying to pretend a sad backstory is any excuse for the bad behavior of an adult (namely, Lee Kang). It isn't. Lee Kang should've had some glimmers of resistance and made some attempts at breaking free from the cycle before or threaded in with all the sad backstory stuff that was shoved in to try and make the audience feel bad for him.

- No explanation as to why Lee Kang likes Kang Junho in particular, in any way that is different from all the other sex friends Lee Kang has that are all so in love with him. It seems like it's solely because Junho is the main character, and that is the only reason why. This isn't good enough for a character like Lee Kang who is way beyond the norm in terms of things that make him desirable/a good catch.

- There was no reason to make the TA a vindictive baby, taking out his anger at Lee Kang on Junho, when Junho was a victim the entire time. And keep in mind that the TA knew this because he had the video footage of at least two of the rapes, including the original/first one that incepted it all.

- Why is this story about a high-skill baseball player and swimmer, yet we almost never see either of them doing either of these things? We didn't even find out that Junho was a pitcher (I think??) until all the way into the middle of the story. At least we see Junho working out regular intervals. I was actually hoping early on that we'd have Junho play in an important game, and see Lee Kang in the stands smirking at him to set him off balance, but we never got any kind of scene like that.

- The conflict between the baseball club and the swimming club is made to be a big deal at the beginning and on into the middle of the story, but this is never resolved. I was awaiting that moment where Junho and crazy blue hair aka swimmer #2 would lead both teams to storm the chairman's place, but we never got any kind of unity between the two clubs, or resolution to their conflict.

- The story had an abrupt ending with no real wrap-up of the main romance plot other than the fact that the two admitted they loved each other in completely separate scenes (but whyyyyy). The story just suddenly stops right after Lee Kang confesses. The redemption of Lee Kang was probably the most important part of the story but it was cut off before it could really get underway. Jiwon in BJ Alex had an entire second season solely devoted to his redemption arc, and Lee Kang was way worse of an ahole than Jiwon ever was, and needed at least as long to clean up all the messes he made.

- Why did the author use the same name for their two protagonists? Lee Kang and Kang Junho. This is confusing, and nothing in the story is ever done with it, so change one of their names to be some thing different so it's easier to understand who is being talked about.

- Why is Kang Junho's character design almost exactly the same as the #2 swimmer / crazy blue hair? There is no reason to make them look that similar unless the story was gonna go for an "Lee Kang's in love with #2, but its unrequited and #2's got a girlfriend, so he jumps on Kang Junho instead because he looks similar" type plot. Doing this for no purpose is confusing. Give #2 pink hair or w/e to distinguish him some.

- Raping w/o lube via buttsecks is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but you generally are going to have to have lube if you're not going to show major injuries resulting from a buttsecks rape or attempted rape. And even then, given the size of most of these BL tops/semes, you're just plain not going to get it in without lube.

Well, I think this is more than enough. I do want to say most of the general topics have many more examples, such as the "doing things that don't make sense" or things happening that have no setup for them. In fact these things happened so often I was frequently shaking my head at it. I really should've kept a list as I read so I could post the entire thing at the end. Oh well.

Anyway. While the problems were incredibly numberous here, I did actually find the story to be very well-paced, which is something a lot of other authors fail at. So kudos there. I also liked the art, especially towards the end of the series. These are the only things which saved this story from a 1-star rating from me. Peace, out!