nb4 "the story isn't over yet" (if anyone even reads this lol) i know! and i think that some of these things could still maybe be incorporated later and somewhat benefit the story but...a lot of the elements i've mentioned here are typically things you'd introduce and hint at earlier on in the story (though there are various ways to tell a story, anyway). to add jaekyung's sad backstory now, for example, would almost feel like a very late attempt at an explanation for his actions previously. and some of these are things that i'm almost certain will never be incorporated into the story, as in, the author has no intention to do so, such as complicating dan's backstory. which is fine, it's her story, but i think it makes it weaker as a result.
YES YES YES
I feel like it going “deeper into the portrayal of abuse” is just… an extremely unrealistic expectation. Im sure there are plenty of pieces of media out there that were made with the intention of doing so, and are probably written way better! Youre asking it to be some think piece this was obviously never going to be. BL isnt even supposed to be an accurate representation of gay guys, its more like the “idea” of a gay guy. Think of it the same way Euphoria depicts the “idea” of a teenager, rather than what a teenager actually is. I feel like trying to take this seriously would be a slap in the face to media that was ACTUALLY made with the intention of being taken seriously
Hm yeah I won’t deny I do tend to have high standards for/expectations of what art I engage with at this point in my life and you are right that there are other pieces of media that do part of what I’m asking for much better! I also know that I tend to be deeply interested in character psychology and how that impacts their interpersonal relationships with one another. It seems true enough to me that the author might not be interested in psychology all that much but she is evidently interested in the relationships. Either way yes, I can’t expect every story to delve into these things to the extent I might if I were writing them.
But at the same time, I don’t think my expectations here are all that unreasonable. Like I said, she chose to include the element into her story and have it be a prominent part of the dynamic between Jaekyung and Dan. To say it’s unrealistic of me to expect more out of that dynamic is like…it’s like, imagine we watch a movie together, and the camera spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on one specific door, but no one in the movie ever really interacts with the door. They might talk about it, they might walk around it, they might touch the doorknob, etc…but they never open it and we never see what’s behind it. Would it really be that unnatural for me to ask what the purpose of the door was? To wonder why they never opened the door? Or wonder what’s behind the door? And if it turned out the door wasn’t that significant then…why would you film the door so much in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been better for the showrunners to direct audience attention towards the things they find actually important?
I’m really not asking it to be a think piece, although I can see how/why you might’ve come to that conclusion based on what I wrote about here…I understand it’s ultimately trying to be a romance story with smut. But don’t you have to have some buy into the characters in a romance to want to see them together? Understand and sympathize with them and where they’re coming from? To me, I don’t even think that the author would have to do much to have deepened her characters a bit. Like with the idea of Dan having parents that enforced this idea of love as financial support—all it would’ve taken to establish something like that would be something like, maybe one little dream sequence. Like how we learn Dan is afraid of being alone from his dream where he’s younger and his grandma disappears for a bit (ough I’m tearing up thinking about it). We didn’t spend a lot of time in that dream, and the author didn’t have to say much about it thereafter, but it was a quick and efficient way to communicate something about Dan as a character and what motivates him without having to do much of anything else.
And like not to go Uno Reverse on you or anything, I’m saying this genuinely, but there are people who legitimately love this webtoon for whatever reason, or think that it’s great. I’m not necessarily trying to change their minds but like…isn’t saying that it’s not serious a slap to the face to both those readers and to the author herself? How do we know she isn’t putting her whole heart into creating this thing in whatever shape it’s taking? I think if it wasn’t meant to be serious it simply would’ve been just straight up porn most chapters, no?
Like y’know as a fic writer who loves their smut—I have a story that was originally supposed to be just porn with feelings, but then it grew a crazy plot. It still has the smut, but I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time developing the not-smut, too. If I wanted people to focus on the smut, I would’ve just cut back on all the other stuff…but I want them to focus on much more, so, yeah. And in fact, I have a series of one-shots that are just pure porn. They don’t fit into or really explore any broader/more complex context outside of the fucking because it’s just not supposed to be about the other stuff, y’know? But to me, this story feels like (or at least at the beginning) felt like it was trying to be about other stuff, too. So. But maybe not! ╮(￣▽￣)╭
idegaf abt the original discourse or manhwa - heck i have not once read a single page of jinx but just come to the comment section to have a ki cause everyone here is extremely messy
sorry i cut myself off, but i love how eloquent u r n i wholly agree with the points you make both in terms of just the general machinations of the human psyche and as elements of characters im a story like wow u hit it out of the park with this comment and it encapsulates my criticisms with a bunch of bl webtoons who try to pass of their "romance" amidst all the bullshit abusive mess as... passable ig, as something "deeper" than rushed and artificial and surface-level, as something the author can convince us is something that is genuine and compelling by itself instead of a romance that we can see is orchestrated by the author because there are fundamental parts and aspects of the characters and/story where this romance doesn't make sense and falls apart if we give it even at least more than 3 seconds of thought so yea i just wanted to commend the breakdown and criticism u provided here. also lowk find it funny how one of the more eloquent constructive criticism and explanation of character psychology ive found is on the comment section of a shitty bl smut webtoon on a pirated manga site like whoa u never know what life will throw at u
haha thank you!! i try :) yeah i didn’t expect to be in this comment section either but alas it’s a fun exercise for me to think through these things so might as well do it here…and i have so much more to say about this story and the things it could’ve done. and you know like, i understand that in many ways this is meant to be just smut or sexual fantasy or something “lighthearted” but it’s also like seriously am i meant to ignore the abuse? when you plan to and already have declared the characters are also in genuine love with each other? i’m sorry but that’s a level of cognitive dissonance i’m unable to suspend my disbelief enough to fall into
mm one more addendum to the idea that leaning more into the abuse is an unrealistic expectation of the story and what it’s trying to do—we all already know that at some point jaekyung is meant to realize all the wrong he’s done, right? i don’t know how this story is actually specifically going to play out beyond that but doesn’t this mean that jaekyung is himself going to have to acknowledge the abuse he carried out on dan, and how badly it impacted and still impacts him? even if we say oh okay we’re not gonna explore the past trauma these two must’ve/might’ve endured to become the way they are (which, as i said, feels like a weak move to me), won’t we at least have to address and explore the lingering trauma of This relationship? or, what, is it just gonna be dan being like “teehee i forgive you for months(?) of sexual violence and emotional abuse” the moment jaekyung turns coat, and there being zero evidence of said months(?) of sexual violence and emotional abuse left on dan’s psyche? forget about whether or not that’s realistic—is that even satisfying as a narrative arc?
I think one of the most ironic "criticisms" leveled at me in the wake of my discussions about this webtoon is the idea that I simply can't handle dark and taboo themes. I could sit here and talk about the nature of the art that I regularly create and engage with but I'm not going to because I simply don't have to prove myself to anyone who doesn't care (if you want recommendations though, by all means, ask). The reality is it's not that I can't handle the toxic/abusive relationship presented in Jinx—on the contrary, I think this webtoon could benefit from leaning even more into it. It would make it a stronger story overall AND it would make it a somewhat stronger romance overall.
I'm not saying it was the author's intention to explore the complexities of an abusive relationship, nor do I think she has any particular obligation to do so. But the simple fact of the matter is that Jaekyung is abusive towards Dan. The author has chosen to include that as a key aspect of their relationship. And so, in light of that, one does have to think about how its being portrayed here, whether or not it's an accurate and/or nuanced depiction, and how it serves or harms the story overall.
Something that I think the story actually did well in its setup is providing good justification for why someone like Dan would end up stuck with someone like Jaekyung in the first place—the circumstances one would have to be in to end up in a Jaekyung's hands. We learn very early on the Dan is and has been struggling to make ends meet, that he is deep in debt, and that he has a terminally ill grandmother to take care of. These all provide sufficient and believable motivation for why Dan would not only end up in what is basically sexual slavery to Jaekyung, but also why he would "choose" to stay with him, despite all of his awful treatment—financial support and security. This isn't even to mention the threats of physical violence, amongst other things, that Dan might face from refusing him, but I digress.
What those circumstances don't really explain to me personally is how and why Dan would eventually come to uncritically fall in love with Jaekyung—to not have any doubts about his own feelings towards Jaekyung in the face of all the abuse, emotionally, sexually, physically, etc. Love doesn't typically have any set logic, but also...it kind of does. And stories undoubtedly tend to abide by some type of logic, or else they become incoherent to the reader.
We know that Dan was raised by his grandmother, but she was perfectly loving and caring of him—so she couldn’t have been the source of a bad model of love and relationships in his life. We do know that he was sexually assaulted by his former boss, but he hadn’t liked that former boss. His former boss made his move of his own volition, and Dan seems to have been able to recognize the wrongness in what his former boss had done to him. So how is it that he can fall in love with Jaekyung without seemingly recognizing the wrongness of their relationship, of what Jaekyung has been doing to him? Why is his only concern when he starts catching feelings is that Jaekyung won't reciprocate them? It reads like he is a completely naive and inexperienced/unknowledgeable teenager who has been conditioned by his parents to think that if his schoolmate teases and hits him, it's because he likes him. Dan is innocent and kind to a fault, yes...but he's also a grown ass adult.
What I think would make Dan’s uncritical love for Jaekyung seem more plausible is if the story explored patterns of abuse and conditioning from loved ones in his past. Like, for example, a parent or parents that equated financial support to love, even though they were emotionally distant/absent and/or outright abusive. Or if Dan had been in romantic relationships that involved elements of financial coercion before—a partner who gave gifts but always with the subtle pressure of getting something specific out of Dan, the idea that Dan should "make up" for said gifts. These are real things that people experience, and can set them up for engaging and getting stuck in abusive relationships in the future. It would make more sense for Dan to be forgiving and unresentful of Jaekyung and to even fall for him if that was something that he was taught to do in the past. But we simply don’t get that. Jaekyung is never kind to Dan in a way that seems to me like it might perpetuate the cycle of abuse—he is abusive from the get-go and does not change at all. He doesn't make any promises to treat Dan better to lure him into any false sense of security or hope, as is what commonly happens in abusive relationships. If anything, he gets worse as the webtoon progresses.
And worse yet, up till now, we have no understanding of WHY Jaekyung behaves the way he does, other than because he is simply a selfish, ungrateful, entitled prick. We don't know what happened throughout his own life for him to have become how he is as we see him. And honestly, at this point, for me at least, we have missed the narrative window on a backstory being something that might make me extend empathy towards him, or change my view of him. You could tell me he was bullied through all his years of school and I would not care. I bring this up mainly because another reason why people tend to choose to stay in abusive relationships is because they feel some sense of empathy for their abuser, or they feel responsible for making them better—the infamous "I can fix him." We get moments of Dan showing empathy towards Jaekyung and the stress he endures as a public figure and as an MMA fighter at that, and the insomnia he suffers from which...while fair, still does not really explain the sheer extent to which Dan is seemingly willing to forgive and/or excuse Jaekyung's actions and behaviors, and blame himself instead.
tl;dr the story could've benefited in a lot of ways from delving deeper and more seriously into its portrayal of abuse. it would've made the story more believable (to me) because the characters, their thoughts, feelings, and motivations would've made more sense, and would've been more interesting.