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begging this comic not to fumble woori he’s so good…
looking at all the promo material and merch featuring the hairdresser ml and softly whispering nooooo… we can do so much better than another insincerely chuckling ‘im bored, you’re interesting’ top
im so tired in that kind of personality, let's explore more we deserves this second male lead
Guwon is very well written character bc I find myself really torn on how to feel about him in a way I think is intentional. Rather than the ‘justified’ moral grey area of a complicated love interest, it feels like an ‘innocent’ one; Guwon comes off like an alien who went to Disneyland once and is trying to recreate society based on what he saw there. Born Sexy Yesterday, for men.
Bc Guwon does, on some level, seem completely naive on just about every level, but… he is also very clearly not a child, and I find I’m at odds with myself.
I like him, I think he’s so sweet, so I catch myself writing off his killings as the well-meaning but misguided actions of a naive man who was never taught why what he does is wrong. But then… thats not entirely true, is it? He lies, he omits the truth, he’s forthright about all the rules of his community up front except for capital punishment and that feels purposeful, which means he knows how to lower someone’s defences. Ergo he does know, on some level, that it’s wrong. And at some point I realise that because I like him, Im choosing to look at the softer side of him and deliberately overlooking the horrific parts. Thats fascinating, so I revisit my assessment with more cynical eyes.
Although… i don’t think an overcorrection of my view on him is correct either; heaping suspicion on Guwon over everything feels like an easy solution, not the right one. I end up doing the same thing but in reverse, choosing to suspect everything he’s done because it fits better with the image of a manipulative villain. So he’s different, and different is kind of alarming sometimes, bc I can’t fall back into the safety net of social norms when making my judgement of him and I have to risk relying on my own.
And btw as much as I like character analysis for enrichment, I think this particular story is leading its readers down this line of thinking as well. The thriller nature, the mystery of the town… the conflict of the main character seems to be what he *wants* to believe is true, and the various disservices that kind of thinking will do to the people around you. Whether that’s being wilfully blind or stubbornly distrustful. Guwon is the mystery; he’s a huge, scary motherfucker who intimidates on sheer height alone, but his innocence is disarming. We think ‘he’s a black flag’, and then we think ‘he’s a green flag’ ‘he’s a gentle giant’ because that’s just as much of a comfortable narrative as big=scary. My hypothesis is it’s more complicated than either of these, and is trying to challenge both the MC and the readers on their need to have a familiar narrative about people, bolstered by the MCs amnesia and the anxiety of not having a ‘story’ he can ground himself on. Themes of ‘degradation of society’ work towards this too, playing towards the feeling of upheaval and loss of the ‘normal’ and the anxieties that causes.
In the end the comic is still ongoing and my opinion may change a lot, but to me Guwon is a character where what you see is what you get. Like we may try to rationalise some kind of logical thoroughfare of hidden motivations that will make him make sense, but we probably WANT him to be that way, because then at least it would make him easier to understand.
Instead, the real challenge will probably be accepting the dissonance as part of his character. He is gentle, playful and tireless in his efforts to protect people, but he is also quick to violence, a liar, childishly selfish and controlling. These parts might exist without conflict in Guwon, entirely honest and in harmony, and it’ll be up to the individual reader, and the protagonist, to decide if it’s okay or not.
YESSSS I LOVE THIS YAP I AGREE I AGREE I AGREE
Love love love the yap u just put everything I was feeling into words but I also want to add that it’s possible that the MC killed his father and in the dream he see guwon because right know in his mind he see him as the greater evil or it’s possible he is just remembering bits and pieces of what really happened
yeah, you’re probably right in suspecting the MCs recalling of events is unreliable right now. Imo it’ll probably be a while before we get any definitive idea about what actually went down, because my suspicion is the gaps in his memory are filling in with whatever makes him feel less unmoored and that disconnect between needing to know what the right answer is and the vague uncertainties of the unknown are going to be the point of his story.
Like, my personal theory is Guwon traumatised him by going from warm fuzzies (sex) to Killing Fields overnight, and the destabilising effect on his brand new world after realising it wasn’t what he thought was so catastrophic, his brain attempted to ground itself by fleshing out lost memories with new faces.
Nothing about his recollection outside of a single act of violence can really be trusted; for example, I don’t know if I completely buy into the idea the man in his memories was his father.
The family picture in his home with his fathers face scratched out is the only idea we have of who the father was to the MC, and the memories we’ve seen until now have all been blurry and dark, but suddenly we have perfect recall of what he looks like? It seems convenient, like he’s already connecting dots between the acts of violence he’s experienced in his life and instead of having a vague, unknown attacker he’s trying to make sense of the chaos by latching onto the other assailant as guilty for both. Metaphorically cutting the corners off a square peg so it can fit in a circle hole, because he doesn’t have a circle peg he only has the square.
I think the possibility he’s killed someone is also extremely likely, and the dissonance between his gentle nature and the horror of murder caused him to latch onto whatever he can justify to himself as self defence. Like I think that’s why he keeps attacking Guwon in his sleep; his brain thinks ‘big man, this is a threat, kill or be killed’ and that primal instinct overpowers him, even though Guwon has never actually hurt him before.
Could go any way though it’s early days, lots of fun to ponder over though :3
I was gonna ask U to do an analysis of Mc/Heo as well XD, I was really intrigued with ur analysis w/ ml/Guwon. I really like ur analysis on both of them and can relate/agree to them I hope the author gives us plot twists cuZ that'd be even more exciting to the plot/story ლ(´ڡ`ლ)
aww!!! It’s nice to be enabled, thank you Thanks for reminding me of Heo’s name btw
Heo actually has a lot of the same motifs as Guwon as far as themes of duality, and imo he’s shaping up to be something of a foil. Whereas Guwon is physically intimidating with a sweeter side, Heo is slim and unexpectedly has an edge of violence, Guwon ignorant of most social norms and has clearly had an atypical life, Heo is extremely educated and careful about his social graces.
The obvious main difference between the two is that Heo is our point of view character, his perspective informs the way we’re supposed to interpret what we’re reading, and he serves as a bit of a reader stand-in in that regard. He brings a modern, cosmopolitan sense of justice and ethics into a totally different environment. His sense of justice, of what is right, makes sense to us, and he’s very reasonable and compassionate because (on the whole) we have come to value those things when we judge others.
But, the landscape they live in is very different from the one they do. They prioritise discipline, survival, the wellbeing of the whole over mercy to the individual, and Heo is unable to reckon with that. I think side of Heo that DOES do whatever it takes to survive, who will kill or be killed, is a part of himself he refuses to acknowledge. Because who he is, the part of himself he is proud of and likes, is incompatible with the brutality of his own survival instincts. I think his amnesia, his fuzzy memories, are metaphorically representative of the conflict within him.
Not to get philosophical, but sometimes we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. Sometimes ignoring the parts of yourself you’re ashamed of gives them a life of their own, and with Heo we see that somewhat acknowledged. He knows, somewhere within, there’s a part of him that he doesn’t want to look at. He tells Guwon that maybe they’re both strange, because the dissonant parts of Guwon I described above also exist in Heo, though they are a lot more at odds with each other than Guwon.
And this was kind of a read but honestly I like Heo a lot, and it’s kind of the same thing as with Guwon where half of me pulls out my hair like “why did you ignore these red flags and not ask any hard questions until it was too late you coward” and another part of me admires his bravery looking down the scariest man he’s ever seen and telling him a harsh truth, minutes after he saw him beat someone to death with his bare hands, just so a child could get medicine. I like them together too I can see why they might cling to each other, theyre guiding one another through a hard, treacherous period of growth and it’s honestly pretty sweet rn