between this and you are my world, i think this creator is great at making characters and conflicts that get people interested, they're great at building drama and keeping that interest as people read with immersive, expressive moments through their artistic skills, but they don't flesh out the relationships and conflicts between characters enough for their conclusions to be satisfying or have real depth. it ends up oddly shallow and insubstantial even though there's time spent on those relationships and conflicts, and plenty of stuff happens.
it's quite frustrating because the material is all there, it's just not all connected or well-explored. so you can make inferences and see why they get to the endings that they do, but that's not very good writing to leave half the work to the reader like that. some level of "fill-in-the-blanks" is fine, but that's not what's happening here.
that said, i'll give a caveat for this take: i read this story ages ago with an unofficial translation, so that may have contributed to my impression for this, but you are my world definitely suffers from what i'm trying to point out.
I agree with everything you said. There's definitely *something* being said here, but comes off, as you said, insubstantial.
And I had no idea this was the same person who did "You Are my World, I can definitely see it some similarities in the writing style, lol
I remembering reading some of this on Tappytoon years ago, but didn't continue when the bullying plot became more and more ruthless.
It is an "older" series, and I will typically give older titles a pass in regards to things like art quality and style, and maybe even pacing.
But having now actually read the entire thing, I'm annoyed with pretty much all the couples. I genuinely don't think there's any good romantic relationship shown in this series.
Maybe I'm supposed to understand this is a story about teenagers and there will be lacking perspective... But I think all the couples should break up, lmao
-Yuri x Jaerim (main couple)-
Jaerim having a complex about his looks and the way people treat him is well established, but he's not dealing with anything particularly awful until Yuri shows interest in him.
Yuri has his trauma that's revealed in the latter half of the story, him being an emotional mess isn't too strange, but his hot/cold feelings for Jaerim is disconcerting. I know Dunno says he helped give Yuri a coping mechanism, but I can't really believe that's what caused Yuri to worry about a pic of him and Jaerim kissing and then not caring about getting caught in the nurse's office
-Doohoon x Yumin-
Okay, this one actually flows and makes sense. I still think Doohoon sucks, but if Yumin wants to forgive him, and Doohoon is actually being a better person, is it that bad in terms of narrative? The thing that finally causes things to stop being so toxic is Yumin trying to protect Jaerim does make me wonder how long it they would've lasted as is...
-Kang X Dunno-
Are they even together by the end? I'm actually not sure wtf relationship they have? It seems like Kang fell in love, got super jealous, and wanted to make things difficult for Yuri. And Dunno... Doesn't stop that behaviour right away. He only hooks up with Kang to get access to the leverage Kang had over Yuri. And that was it? Dunno really is the character that does things for shits and giggles, but cares for Yuri without being in love with him, somehow.
-Heeno X Aerok-
Why was this even included??? Heeno is barely in the story, then we get flashback of him being absolutely horrible to Aerok before he lost weight when he confessed his feelings, then he fell in love with beautiful archer Aerok, and Aerok is like yeah, okay??? I know the plot point is that Aerok too was superficial regarding Heeno, but what am I supposed to assume about their relationship?
Plus the little bonus chapter at the end would've been a great chance to have Heeno see Aerok as he originally was before losing weight but it's just him being a cat boy, just because >_>
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I always cringe when random NPC girls are vicious bullies in BL type stories. It just comes off shallow and an easy antagonist to create.
Can bitches be crazy? Absolutely! But 9/10 times? C'mon.... Okay hyperbole, but it's definitely a cliche.
We get 1-2 nice girls in the Student Council President and the Accounting Manager to even out how awful the girls are, but they're barely in the story (although were they a couple? It felt like it was implied, but I wish they had a solo chapter with that couple if it's true)
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One thing I will concede is that, if I hated it that much, I would've stopped reading like I originally did on Tappytoon. But I did find myself getting caught up with the drama. I guess I was hate-reading more than actually enjoying it, but, I guess that's something.