Okay this is all adorable but i’m sweating looking at all these flashing red lights telling me something fucked up is coming…
this guy is an absolute freak bastard but also probably the funniest character i’ve ever seen?
Is he a good guy? Fuck No. Does he deserve hell? Yes. Is he BIZARRELY likeable and relatable? Oh boy…
All of the above. I absolutely loathe thay piece of shit. Our boy deserves so much BETTER. But, I also sort of adore how fucking stupid he gets when Mokhwa even so much as looks at him. He's an idiot, a cute one, and also an awful person. I am so confused.
Oh dear, this is all so sad.
I feel so sorry for her, this has to be one of the most brutal, crushing displays of slow rotting agony in a patriarchal love.
Bjorn is a bastard, and on top of that he’s not equipped to even begin understanding why and how this is going to end badly. From the very beginning he’s never allowed his vision of Erna to evolve beyond the convenient, stupid, malleable sex doll he won in a bet. Even when his own sincere feelings began to develop, they were hamstrung by his own misogyny. He can’t imagine a world where she’s a complex human being, his ideal wife is ultimately an unfulfilling and unachievable pipe dream, but he’s so used to getting everything he wants he can’t process it.
So his foot is glued to the patriarchal pedal, and everything is going his way, and his wife is capitulating to all his demands in spite of the way he’s treated her, and he’s incapable of doing the one thing that can save her and their relationship; allowing her to be a human being who is enraged and ugly and broken and out of his control.
Lord it’s all so familiar, we’ve heard this song before, the stupid little boy and the woman he almost killed trying to turn her into a doll. I know she’ll be okay, but god it’s so easy to imagine the version of this story where she doesn’t… it’d be karmic.
see this is why yall gotta watch out when you call a protagonist weak or stupid bc sometimes their naïveté is going somewhere and the writing is bomb. “I see, everything had been met with quiet acceptance” “I don’t know if it was pretty enough for him” Cripplingly sad lines.
Oh take the ABSOLUTE piss that’s where the cliffhanger ends
AHAHAHHAHAHA wowwww what a note to end on. I knew the mc was an absolute prick about being vulnerable, but he was truly an unflinching dickhead to the last moment. Genuinely burst out laughing when i saw ‘The End’. I can’t tell whether I loved him or hated him but he was certainly interesting!!!!!
Seriously this comic feels kinda messy bc it had strong, STRONG moments of philosophical dialogue, but some absolutely coconuts pacing and romantic development. It’s so all over the place in its thesis statement on the balancing act of leaders exercising brutality as needed, while still feeding the core of humanity within them that needs to be compassionate. A compelling premise, but it doesn’t exactly have much to do with the actual interpersonal development, so it feels like missed potential. Overall I certainly can’t say I thought this was good, but it’s certainly different!
wow this guy suuuuuuucks
genuinely I can’t get over it. I normally have a pretty high tolerance for seedy puppetmaster love interests but, in spite of this being significantly fluffier and sfw than other stories with guys like this, I find his oiliness levels to be off the charts. Maybe it’s the way yoon never even thought abt what the mc would decide for himself, maybe it’s this bullshit doting boyfriend act, or the way yoon totally removed any chance the mc had of hearing the full story, or maybe it’s the ENTIRELY unnecessary 3D chess when the mc seemed to like him JUST FINE on his own… god i just want the mc to run for the damn hills.
Like ‘he’ll be president soon’ THATS SCARY. HES A SCARY GUY.
Oh god long post. I get kind of frustrated with people saying this has ass characters/writing when it’s clearly an extremely well constructed toxic dynamic. Obviously to clarify I’m not out here saying what Wooyeon does Is Fine. He sucks, he’s arrogant, his mental illness does not excuse his actions because, contrary to popular opinion, those with ASPD/dark triad markers are actually more likely to manifest apathy towards others than outright sadism. It reads a lot more as an excuse for his shithead behaviour.
BUT… narratively there IS something compelling about a manipulative control freak who’s paying too much attention to his own puppet show to notice he’s falling in love simply because he underestimates his own capacity for sincerity. Likewise a protagonist too self-aware to outrun the horrible realisation he IS, actually, very capable of loving a man who has no problem hurting him and those around him… that’s sauce!!!
They are clearly not role models for an ideal relationship dynamic! They are being written, intentionally, as foil for one another in a broader narrative about the anxiety of falling in love. Wooyeon is on one side of the scale, he has an ice cold grip on his own emotions and observes himself from a distance, everything is deliberate, calculated, according to plan. Inseop is on the other, he cannot control what he feels, his feelings are a betrayal of what he knows is right, he cannot help but sabotage his own rationality because he’s in horrible, hateful love (he’s wilfully negligent, even).
When they are around one another, they destroy each other. Literally, yes, but also spiritually. Wooyeon finds there are facets within him that he didn’t know were there, a terrifying and rage-inducing feeling for someone who’s always had power over his own actions. Inseop realises he’s finding peace with the fact he loves a bastard, he manufactures self-loathing because he feels like he SHOULD hate himself for loving Wooyeon, that’s what a good person would feel. And if he doesn’t, if he actually genuinely is okay with loving this man, then what does that make him?
It’s total annihilation.
Some of the most interesting love stories are about destruction, about the upside-down feeling that you’re losing your grip on yourself, the awful and wonderful ways people will change you against your will, realising there are parts of you you never knew existed and maybe don’t like very much, about surrendering control and embracing oblivion. They’re not for everyone, they can be a tough read, but that doesn’t mean they’re not GOOD.
it was better in the beginning recent chapters its redundant and lazily written (ik its based on a novel)
ikr their characters are written well, i mean if u compare it to the other manhwas that's just straight up abusive and completely mistaking it as bdsm/sadist/maso etc..
Thank god someone say this. Cause I have been telling people this is not your normal love story. And they're still expecting a cliche story plot, still refuse to understand characters in the story. Not gonna lie I had to put off from reading the novel so many times because it gets too much sometimes. But like you said, it is compelling and interesting in its own way.
For real. And tbh I’ve definitely had my stomach turned reading through this a couple times, but I’m someone who likes the way well written media will make me flinch, and then think about why i flinched. I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for tapping out on this story or even hating it for the way it made them feel, it’s a total horror show at times, but i wish more people could distinguish between THAT and a story written like ass.
Alas, I wanted to like it but… Neither of them are interesting enough to pull off their personality defects. Dohyeons character feels tired, the MC has one foot in naive waifish uke and one foot in halfhearted chav, neither of them are worth the effort.