Honestly, considering it’s BL I’m just happy he was just a douche and not a rapist/abuser compared to other titles.
Yeah I feel like because he was just a douche his redemption arc actually worked and people love him now compared to other bls that no matter how much "redemption" they gave their mls it didn't matter because of how toxic they are
Tbh he's like a yellow flag to me, in the beginning and even now tbh, he's not a red ,or even worst, black flag type of ml.
Just the type of guy in real life where if you ever meet him, you would wish he would stub his toe every morning with how annoying he seems, but don't wish for his death because he's not that bad yk
That’s kinda downplaying what he has done by just calling him ‘immature’. The point is that he was THAT bad. He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer (huge red flag), didn’t give a fuck about other people’s feelings (his exes and MC) and many other things that I can make a huge list of. The only reason why he doesn’t seem that bad is because the situations were portrayed as ‘well MC also wants this’, but in reality he borderline raped MC a few times (pressing for ‘yes’ is considered to be sexual assault and he did just ignore ‘no’ multiple times to proceed with whatever he wanted with MC, so…). Ffs there were literally two scenes where the guy went down on MC while he was sleeping. Twice. And, again, it was downplayed only because ‘MC enjoyed that’ or ‘MC gets mad but doesn’t actually make a big deal out of it’.
He wasn’t overhated. He was hated for valid reasons. And now his character is developing to express for empathy, emotional maturity and maturity in general above all other things he needs to work on.
I don't think he was overhated at all in the beginning, he was a horrible person because he didn't care and like you said he would force himself on mc at times, but that's the point, he's supposed to be a "bad guy turned good" and I think the author did this trope really good, alot of times when mangas do this ml turns nice trope, they make the ml so bad that no matter how hard they tried to make him good now it didn't work, basically my point was that I liked how the author made him actually redeemable and "just a douche" and while in real life I would never date him I think for manga where everything is exaggerated to make more interesting, I'm happy they didn't go over board with making him a bad person
Another thing is also that he was alot like my brother at 16, my brother went through a phase where because he was the popular kid at school he would only date 10/10 girls, he would show me photos and say "she has a big butt but her boobs are kinda flat" and his realtionships were always empty and lasted very little, then when he got out of highshool and wasn't the popular kid no more and had to work full time, he started gaining weight and women didn't come up to him anymore , he had to work for them, he started realizing how empty his past realtionships were and how nice it would be to have a actual girlfriend who cares about him as a person and not just a socail staus, he changed and stopped caring about women's bustsizes and more of just personality, very similar to ml and I feel like alot of men go through this phase, even women do
I completely agree with that take. Many authors have a problem of making MLs do really shitty stuff and go overboard with it, making it VERY hard to make ML have a proper redemption and most of the time it’s really unsatisfying to read (eg. ‘Night by the Sea’, ‘Kiss me, Liar’, ‘Limited Run’). Then there are ‘redemption’ genre manhwas that do it very well (which is rare) like ‘A Cup Full of Water’, ‘I Won’t Accept Your Regrets’ (not BL) and partly ‘Nerd Project’ (ML there was a huge douchebag but had a very valid reason and made up for it).
The big difference between good and bad redemption is: how well the issue is addressed, how bad ML (or sometimes MC) was and what they did for forgiveness. For example, in ‘A Cup Full of Water’ ML was really emotionally unintelligent due to his upbringing and trauma. Valid reason. How exactly he hurt MC? He wasn’t abusive, but was very inconsiderate and made MC feel unloved. It was addressed, ML went to therapy and actively tried to do better for a long time.
Now this manhwa is in a grey area. As I said before, the issues are BIG and they are never addressed properly. MC tried to bring up the problem with not taking ‘no’ for an answer, but author made very poor choices that made characters just skip through that. It *feels* not bad because no one pointed out ML’s very shitty behaviour and he didn’t suffer for it. And when he does suffer, it’s not for long and he gets off the hook quickly. Even in the latest chapters he says ‘damn so the reason MC didn’t want to go out with me was because of his shitty ex’ like… no. Shitty ex was only part of the problem.
It also feels not that bad because it’s a comedy and author decides to not put too much attention on the problematic side of ML. That’s why it seems that he ‘wasn’t that bad’ but if it wasn’t comedy… that dude would’ve seen the trenches.
I’m sorry for what your brother has gone through, but bad behaviours are still bad behaviours. What ML and your brother did were bad. And to downplay their actions by saying there were ‘just immature’… is not it.
I agree that ML ‘wasn’t as bad as some other MLs’, but he was still BAD. Like, pretty bad. Treating women as objects is a problematic behaviour and it’s not ‘immaturity’. Fucking MC and covering his face, basically using him as a sex object? Pretty bad. Taking ‘no’ for an answer? Pretty bad. Trying to emotionally manipulate MC into relationship just to have sex and dump him? Pretty bad. The list goes on.
Again, the manhwa is comedy, so they downplay a lot of things.
I feel like jaehyuk at start is what most people are like in college and hs, horny and date just to date/play around, he was just also rude asf but that was only towards mc because he's a man but it seems like he was a good with other girls and treated them well during their "night", literally the only thing that made him bad was that he was homophoic but that was only the reason for first 10ish chapters then it was more like " I don't like that I like you because there's no way I'm gay" he's bascially just a real life immature man finally growing up and realizing that yes I like someone who's not a 10/10 mommy and that personality exists ,compared to other MLS that go through same " there's no way I like a man" but are abusive and are literally just psychos