this is the cutest damn thing i've read in my life. who knew a mafioso ahjussi could be so endearing??? i loved the sense of humor in this.
after reading a couple of their works, i must say this author is a phenomenal artist and a poor writer. the stories are always just... blah.
so sad to see this shelved just as the plot was accelerating. i hope the author's health improves and that potentially they could revisit this story one day. it's rare to find slow burns like this one. also, cliff and ed both remind me of xie lian from TGCF in a way—the dynamic is basically martyr x martyr and i realized i actually don't see that in fiction much.
Wait i didn't know it was bc of the authors health rhat makes me so sad. I hope the author recovers and can continue to create amazing works such as this and her other ones.
i always played clerics/priests in RPGs so it's fun to read a story with one as the protag. the women characters are written with respect which is a huge bonus.
sometimes "i love you" can sound like "i will be the one to retrieve your remains." that line knocked the wind out of me. i really liked the way this story questioned what is romantic love—and the tangled threads of affection, shared history, loyalty, and responsibility that constitute it—or seem to. that it's often never as clear cut as we want it to be, and love alone isn't enough to build a life on. there is a wider world out there, something greater than ourselves. there always is. secondary to the love story, this was a lovely homage to the passion and sacrifice of journalists around the world, who do what they do at great personal risk. i thought the author handled all of this with great sensitivity and compassion. there was never a point where i disliked any of the characters, who are all trying their best in their own way to deal with grief and uncertainty. unlike some manhwa where there are reductive roles of damsel and villain, etc., here they are very human.
how the fuck do you regularly fuck a man for two years and not know what a prostate is. how do you get regularly fucked for two years and never teach your partner how to do it better. now that's just silly.
i'm aro ace and i've also had.. complicated relationships with social expectations and love and desire. and i've also had a stalker who was obsessed with me for 8 years and delivered crazed love letters to my house accusing me of being heartless. and threatened to kill himself. anyway that's in the past now but man is this triggering all those painful little buttons. hurt people tend to hurt themselves (and those around them) all the more. i was pleasantly surprised to find such a realistic and emotionally raw portrayal of rape trauma, depression, and even asexuality and aromanticism (though the aromanticism was brought under the umbrella of asexuality—i don't know how these concepts are viewed in korea's lgbtqa community). a fantastic but heavy and dark read.
Hopefully you wont have to deal with that stalker again and I completely agree with you. This story is well thought even from the heavy topics
thank you dear, all is well now.
to put it into perspective, i started reading this when i was in high school, and i remember wondering what it was like to work in publishing like they did. fast forward about 13 years and now i'm an editor too. (yes, the deadlines really are as brutal as they appear...). for that reason, this manga will always have a soft spot in heart as a kind of "snapshot" of my younger self. but my god, how long is it going to take for onodera to learn to communicate? here's hoping he confesses before i make senior editor at least.
i love jian yi so much, and i hope OX can turn the story's attention towards his and zhan zhengxi's side of things soon, probably when more of the mystery and plot hit. it's been the he tian and mo guan shan show for quite a while.