it's hard to keep reading when the ml has the personality of white bread with the backbone of a slug
THANK YOU gosh you've put some of my thoughts about this story into words. The story suffers so much from how shallow both Dan and Jaekyung are as characters—we don't get any complexity in emotion from either of them, no real development in their relationship with each other. Hell, even up till now, we still don't really know or understand WHY Jaekyung even acts the way he does. Dan is seriously almost nothing but his fuck toy and emotional punching bag, and Dan doesn't ever even hold any resentment against him whatsoever. it doesn't read for me as being a toxic romance or even just a plain toxic relationship, it's just straight up abusive. It's like reading a story about someone kicking a small puppy over and over again. Like I'm gonna feel awful and keep feeling awful but also I'm gonna get bored and ask myself what the hell even is the point if the story's not gonna go anywhere else.
I similarly like...I don't know what the author plans to do but similarly I feel like even though I won't outright gouge my eyes out, I sure will be rolling them. Because right now I don't believe that Jaekyung actually holds any real affection for Dan, and I'm going to have a very hard time buying into the idea that he does. I don't even really believe in Dan's unquestioning feelings (although I've also tried to rationalize it by saying that it's just his poor self-esteem or stockholm or something). And I certainly don't care to see the two end up together in the end, after everything.
3/10. The backbone of this story is mostly the art. Tbh, I do like the details the author made for the mma setting, was really cool and interesting. I also love potato, my fav character in this story. I think i like all the characters except Kim Dan and Jaekyung, who are honestly both hard to like.
I love toxic romance, and honestly coming from someone who is mostly color blind to red flags, this was the story that I had to keep putting down out of frustration. I understand that the author tried to make this toxic romance as toxic as possible so that the redemption is as satisfying as possible. But tbh, Mingwa is not a good enough writer to pull that off.
Having fifty chapters of just Jaekyung screaming about how much he hates Kim Dan and then KD falling in love just made me want to gouge my eyes out. A lot of ppl say KD was stupid to fall in love, but in a way I do understand. KD is clearly not mentally well, what with being in constant debt and having his only supportive figure be in the hospital, it’s not hard to believe that he’d fall in love with the man that basically solved all his problems. This is also why I just don’t really buy how this is a romance. It’s clear that KD is just in love with him bc he’s his savior, and Jaekyung is just screaming at him like he’s the source of all his problems. I’m not blaming KD, but it is really a torturous read for me.
You can’t even say this is a toxic romance either, it really just felt like a “how much can we torture KD” story. I think the issue is that the author doesn’t really know how to make the reader stay aside from “I invested so much story already, might as well just see it through”. Jaekyung is hard to like aside from his looks, and KD is honestly just a boring mc whose only character trait is being depressed.
I just don’t this is a good story, and i’m honestly not reading it bc I think of this as a good romance, but more of I already committed 50 chapters.