Responses
this is an excellent breakdown.
I think the family conflicts and suah and juhyeok's internal secondary gender conflicts would be more at the forefront for people if the story directly focused on it more. perhaps the author is saving that for later, but I think it would have been better to load that stuff up front. but like, in a fleshed out, we're-having-an-arc way, not the quick backstory type setup we already have. perhaps it's coming, though.
We see su-ah being a child star/model. He is expected to be an omega by the people all around him because of the way he looks. He was put in this predatory industry and his mother and the industry exploited him as a child. Everybody around him expected him to be an omega and he, himself expected to be an omega so his experience being an "omega" was him getting exploited and abused by all of these people and his own mother. His experience being treated as omega makes him think that his actions in scenting Juhyeok is justified. In his head what he did even when Juhyeok doesn't want it was the best thing to do because he once live as an omega who was objectified by the people around him and Juhyeok himself also "abandoned" him. He project that insecurities and abandonment onto Juhyeok.I wouldn't say his actions is fully malicious or that it's also not selfish because he is acting on it due to his own experience but at the same time it's also selfish because it give him a sense of security because he knows Juhyeok needs him. He objectified Juhyeok by scenting him and in turn he got objectified because he set those system up where their relationship is built on physical dependence created by su-ah. Su-ah build their relationship on minpulation and coercion and his trauma is not a reason to dilute or ignore the harms he caused Juhyeok.
Here is the thing his actions forced Juhyeok to confront his struggle with being an omega while also reinforcing Juhyeok's insecurities. Juhyeok internal conflict isn't "He looks down on omega." He doesn't. He was a child when his body started to changed. His fear is what being an omega means in his world, being at the mercy of someone else, losing control over his autonomy. We also get implications that his mother's family might have not want anything to do with him being an omega because in the chapter of his mother throwing him a celebration of becoming an omega..it was mentioned that his grandparents didn't want to come. In the omegaver we already know that patriarchal system. Alpha>> all the others. He is a character that is shaped by that system and is dealing with it in his own way. His goal also reflects the fact that all tho he put this facade of hating his secondary sex, he actually resisting to that system by proving that him being an omega himself that omega can do everything that an alpha can.
Why are some su-ah Stan first instincts to defending su-ah or getting validation for liking him is to put Juhyeok down. It's always "su-ah was a child" and so was Juhyeok and yeah Juhyeok pushed su-ah out and it probably hurt his feelings but it either he move on or he don't. Juhyeok doesn't even reenforces those harm onto Su-ah. He is just working towards his own goal while navigating through the system su-ah set up and this whole conception of saying he don't know because he was a child needs to stop. Go back and read chapter 4. This dude got beat up by Juhyeok when Juhyeok first found out about the scenting. Get warned multiple times not to do it. Juhyeok keeps saying he doesn't feel well because of him, su-ah himself admitted to scenting him ever since he turned into an Omega. Su-ah knows pill don't work for Juhyeok too and in the prologue it literally showed how he might have scented Juhyeok unknowingly far before he even know Juhyeok secondary gender. He knows what he did. He does not care because this is what is keeping his place beside Juhyeok secure.
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