I feel the same way. I feel especially frustrated with the fact that all this suffering was not at all necessary and led to no character development whatsoever. It's like the whole point of that was to make me feel miserable as the reader. I hate when authors rely on suffering as a crutch. Plus I feel like it was unfair of seung-eon to constantly have his emotions overlooked and played with. He was an honest person and tried so much to be better always.
Yes, precisely. If the author's goal was to make us empathize with Jinwook, they failed miserably. And to be clear, my complaint is more about the writing. There should be a reason for me to root for this character, like tiny moments of him making the least bit of effort to better his situation, but instead I get to watch him put his faith in the wrong people while knowing the risk, all because he couldn't stand that his boyfriend was raised in privilege (despite also having experienced quite the trauma) and he didn't want 'handouts'. He never takes accountability and only blames other people.
Some characters who are in somewhat similar situations that I think were written better are the Yoohan (MC) from Payback and Euihyun from LTIT. Both of them went through some difficult times but they showed so much perseverance, I feel like I was being rewarded as I continue reading their stories.
Thank you for this. Most of the time, I shut my brain when reading BL, especially manhwas and manhuas. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone rape in real life, but I kinda got jaded on it on manhwas/manhuas/manga, so I just think of it as a plot device and move on as to not stress myself so much.
But I don’t like stories with no progress, or the characters at that. So you saved me from wasting my time here. Guess gotta go and re-read some worthwhile manhwas like Sign instead of reading this HAHAAHHAAHA
I also don't particularly mind that type of content in the stories I read, but you're absolutely right. There needs to be meaningful growth and healing because otherwise I just subjected myself to all of that without any closure.
Righhht? Maybe make the plot more interesting and/or the characters so that it actually made up for the shitty rape-y stuff the author [unnecessarily] throws at us.
thank you for this!
I hate author's when they add traumatic shit in stories for no reason, just for plot, and what i mean is, lets say they'll add rape, so the male lead can save the mc or some bs like that.
I also hate it when author's add traumatic shit, just because, no story building, no trauma for the characters NOTHING nada, like having all this traumatic shit happening to you and you're ok? Please some people are resilient, but trauma, after trauma has to have some sort of build up on that person!
I hate it when trauma is only put in stories to make it edgy or be there for plot reasons, and nothing else without it being dismissed properly, some writer's are absolutely amazing with writing traumatic things, with good reason and addressed properly and not just a plot drive for the mc and ml/fl to bang their way into it.
I havent read this, but i am not picking it up.
Thank you for the honest review
I'm so upset that I had to finish this so I'm gonna rant a bit.
This was trauma porn and nothing else. I had to abandon this at chapter 67. I only forced myself to finish it today because I already wasted time reading 67 chapters and not getting any closure would have only added to the frustration.
The main problem for me here is I just cannot root for the main character. Every decision he's ever made completely made his life worse and he knows it. I feel no sympathy for him because he has no redeeming qualities. Feels like the writer made a list of the worst possible things you can put a character through and just decided to add all of them to the story instead of picking 2-3.
Imagine 13 years of zero growth. Imagine trusting every single evil person in this book but not the person who's been actually helping and supporting you. And then blaming that person for every tragedy. Yes, Seung-eon was no saint, but if your choices are all assholes anyway, you could've picked the least evil one. Only at the very end does he say he avoided him all this time so that he wouldn't be burdened. What a load of bs.
The events that led to the bad things that happened to Jinwook could have been avoided, and he had every opportunity to escape that hell but he actively chooses not to. Instead, he puts himself in even more dangerous situations.
If he didn't pull that "pay me 1.9 billion won and I'll be with you" crap and just paused and used his supposedly smart brain for two seconds, none of this would have happened. And even after the first 4-year time skip, when he just believed the freaking loan sharks about Seung-eon being responsible for his dad's death NO QUESTIONS ASKED, zero brain usage. And then he continues being friends with Hyung-seo even after he was warned about him and after Hyung-seo crossed his boundaries more than once. Still he wants to be friends with him.
With the way this character was written and his lack of critical thinking skills, it was a good thing he didn't become a lawyer. I would not trust this man to make any rational decision ever.