A passing thought

I believe that amidst the wave of contrasting emotions we experience while reading a story, we totally override a few core values. So I wish to share a difficult reminder, or maybe a novel perspective. Do spare me three minutes of your time.

With all due respect, you bunch are trying so painstakingly hard to be relevant in someone else's story (for whatever reason), that you forget the protagonist isn't you. Rather, they are their own, with their own emotional baggage, wordly perception, trauma, their own pace of navigating through life and, consequently, their own way of combatting their reality's challenges. Yet, instead of thoroughly observing, analyzing and inquiring about the reason driving their behaviour, you choose to be critical of it, because it doesn't align with your ideal perception. To me, you seem like perfectionistic visionaries, who subconsciously impose your vision on someone beyond yourselves. And for me, this is peak egoism and self-absorption. Not that you can't own it.

In fact, you are so preoccupied by projecting what you perhaps can't yet accomplish, that you disrespect the character's own journey towards their respective healing. Dan's journey is something to be proud of, not intolerant of. It entails faults and feats which comprise the raw image of his psyche, and yet you dehumanise him by critisising every decision he's made for himself because they don't pertain to your likings. In other words, who do you think you are to have the right to a say over somebody's life? To believe that they should act according to your preference? Honestly, your attitude towards fiction is the reflection of your ego, in Freudian terms, and it depicts your behaviour towards every worldly incident, human exchange and each human psyche, including your own.

How about you look at the characters, not through the lenses of your own coloured perception, but for who they are? To look at the gravity the unfolded events actually hold over their emotions, and not however much you think these events should affect them. For reference, it is always "Dan is not initiative enough" and "Jaekyung hasn't suffered enough". But in my eyes, all I have seen is not a wimp and an aggressor, but two protagonists both of whom have been suffering from the very beginning. And they really may not be that different from each other after all, hence why they are attracted to one another.

It's difficult to free ourselves from the binds of our selfish emotions, I am working on it. I think Jinx would be a great story if not for the excessive romanticised grape. Stories like these are made to challenge the boundaries of your attachment too, to urge you to reconsider the contrast within your values and the character's, to distinguish the boundaries between your influence over someone and the right they've got to themselves. Once you stop trying to relate to every character, and decentre yourself from the plotline (not entirely ofc, you still have the right to express dismay and disagreement!), perhaps you'll begin enjoying ambiguous stories a little more.