Kal's Favorite

Ya all, I have some news for you guys. Admins are turning off comment sections one by one. Hold your tits and be quite, stop messing around and read your manga/hwa/huas . Creators are pointing on this websites especially on comment section so be careful what you are typing out of anger. It is being recorded, at least I have been informed abt that. Cheers

it's my birthday today, and this is a nice birthday gift cuz this manhwa hasn't updated in a while.ヾ(❀╹◡╹)ﾉ~

GOD DAMN HE GOT THAT COW SIZED TATAS

who tf wants to get railed by some sexy yakuza men? bunch of weirdos

MD is toxic af and has wronged Chanwoo in so many ways, such as disregarding the fact that he had just exited an abusive relationship and asked him to be in a relationship + he literally manipulated Chanwoo into doing sexual acts with that hoe against his will which is literally sexual assault. Chanwoo is mentally and emotionally fragile and had every right to reject MD, but the fact that he retaliated and slapped him for not wanting to kiss the hoe... Yeah, yikes. Down vote this shit all you want im just tired of y'all pretending this relationship is anything but toxic.

He channeled his inner Kool-Aid man

I will never understand why some translators get so overprotective of the narrative and try to control people's responses to it. It's not even your story in the first place, so the personal stake in the reader response is so strange to me. Obvi we appreciate what you do and there wouldn't be much of a scanlation community without yall, but that doesn't mean you get to police the opinions on the stories that you've translated. The snippy little warnings and admonishments on the credits pages take away from the reading experience, it's a little too JKR iykwim ╮(￣▽￣)╭

I wasn't going to do this but the tea is hot and I feel like these things need to be said.

The key themes of this webtoon are not good vs evil, rapist vs lover, or any such thing. It explores the grey area that exists in the underbelly of humanity by presenting us three imperfect characters; yes, Ed is included.

To start with, the initial setting is New York's chinatown. With any amount of cultural context, most people can deduce the living conditions in what Chang himself refers to as the projects. Children are left parentless as guardians work as many hours in the day to eck out a living for their families. There is no one to care for the young and/or the old, and there is a lot of exploitation directed at immigrant communities. If you're not aware, you can look up things like the chinese exclusion act, and specifically also, about asian immigrants and laundries (because Ed's uncle/grandpa had one that Chang seizes... lol).

This context is important because it helps to contextualize where Ed and Chang (and Youyu) grow up. The only way to leave poverty is by doing illegal things. There is no American dream of working hard and ascending social classes. Chang can't, for instance, just go to college and become a regular worker. There's no money for that, there's no credit for loans (think, he has no family and is supporting his grand mother from the time he is in high school, that credit is SHOT).

Ed also grows up in these conditions and finds a little bit of warmth in Chang's grandmother and his relationship with Chang. Something he himself remembers fondly as he narrates the story.

Now, to bring us to the conflict, we have to be aware of the fact that aside from Chang's predatory debt practices, there is a primary predatory system which makes loansharking and predatory behavior at the behest of loansharks legal – namely a complex legal and banking system which is rigged on behalf of the lenders. This is not just harmful to Ed, it creates things like the school to prison pipeline, lack of infrastructure and small businesses in immigrant communities, etcetc.

The work is VERY aware of these things at least considering how well researched some of these plot points and narrative points are.

Anyway, so Ed, with precious little choice, turns to filming in porn. The thing that seems to be in contention between readers here is whether choosing to act in porn is the equivalent of being trafficked and when pressure applied to actors who enter the world becomes predatory. In Ed's case, he rejects Jeanine multiple times and she also mentions that it's the usual flow of things for an actor to appear in a few masturbation shoots and to then do a full blown porno.

We suspect that Ed is not comfortable with this, but we don't know how he truly feels about it until we see Ryan as a foil to Ed. He's in a shit position because he has to take care of his child, has been betrayed by Glen, and at the very least, has the common decency to warn Ed.

Within Ed and Glen's relationship, we sort of see a laidback and blurred out version of a relationship. Ed never tells Glen the truth about what is bothering him. He never knows what to say to Glen when he is upset, and he never knows exactly what sets Glen off. Often times, Ed is walking on eggshells trying to figure out what exactly makes Glen tick. The only things we learn about Glen are how he feels about the film he made and the character within that film.

Glen never learns about where Ed comes from, why he's doing porn, or what his circumstances are. Even when Ed needs to move apartments, Glen isn't able to step in like a partner. He doesn't stop doing porn.

Overall, he's distant, and it's not that the writer isn't capable of showing us the inside of a character's mind. We're just not afforded that for Glen aside from like one chapter that we kind of see from his perspective.

Ed's big blow out with Glen sort of is about how Glen's behavior is predatory. Ed recognizes that and Ed also tells Glen that what Glen did to Ryan and to Ed is something Ed considers to be akin to rape.

So overall, we have two different types of subjugation occurring at the hands of Chang and Glen. One is monetary control, and the other is sexual dominance and control.

The work is not asking the reader to pick one and say "this one is better!" it just is the way it is. By the end of this work, the dynamic flips. Chang rapes Ed and Glen pays off his debt. I know everyone sees Glen paying off the debt as a positive thing, but when you consider how Ed reacted to the $50,000 in his bank account, it's not difficult to imagine the imbalance of power and the feeling of "owing" this can/will create in the relationship.

Anyway, so I used some flippant phrasing last time I posted on here because I didn't wanna go full serious mode, but here I am regardless.

At the end of the day, the work is more about how a system of racism and poverty creates violence and subjugation; and the little, imperfect, but human ways people have to find to move beyond those circumstances.

And for the people who are upset at the physical and sexual violence between Chang and Ed and the sexual violence and manipulation between Ed and Glen (the Lancer video scene (yes, even though he stops it, he also created the scenario), the jealous of Chang after the play scene) etc... um back to my sentence –– this is literally a webtoon about morally ambiguous characters, you're going to witness some bad things.

And finally if you got this far, thanks for reading.

I just want to say that the Chang and Ed graveyard scene is shot in the rain with Chang's hair down because he is totally crying. (literary tropes 101, man in rain ;))

Just remember if you grew up without a family while being blamed about your family's death by your only living relative while also having to support and being dirt poor you might turn out kind of fucked up too. Especially if the one person you love almost dies and you come face to face with loss for the millionth time. He's not right, but he is human.

Alright hope that explains a bit. toodaloooooo~~

WHAT THE FIGITITY FUCK FUCK I NORMALLY NEVER CRY TO THESE KIND OF THINGS BUT THIS THRILLER GOT ME FUCKED IN THE ASS I'VE NEVER WANTED TO SEE CHARACTERS BE HAPPY IN MY LIFE I WANTED SOMETHING LIKE SAVE ME BUT I GOT THIS AND I'M NOT DISAPPOINTED IT'S SO REALISTIC AND GOOD I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF THIS HEART WRENCHING AND RACING STORY BUT AUTHOR PLEASE COME BACK AND MAKE A ALT ENDING BECAUSE I DEADASS NEED TO SEE MY BABIES HAPPY I BEG TYLOVEYOU＼(;´□｀)/