LalaLove's Topics (16)

Ilay’s attachment to Taeui is the really interesting part

One of the biggest pieces of subtext is that Taeui becomes an exception.

Not because Taeui magically discovers the “real Ilay.”

Rather, Taeui is one of the few people who interacts with Ilay without treating him exclusively as a monster.

And that seems to be enormously significant to Ilay.

There’s even a childhood connection that gets adapted into the manhwa, which adds another layer to why Taeui occupies such a strange psychological position for him.

Ilay doesn’t suddenly become morally better because he likes Taeui.

Instead, his relationship with Taeui begins exposing a part of Ilay that seemingly didn’t exist in his ordinary relationships with other people.

That’s why his behavior toward Taeui becomes so contradictory.

He can be:

* possessive
* threatening
* cruel
* jealous
* genuinely protective
* emotionally dependent
* fascinated
* sexually attracted
* and eventually deeply attached

simultaneously.

That’s the point.

⸻

And the “contradiction” is intentional

This is something I think people miss when they interpret Ilay exclusively through contemporary relationship discourse.

If you approach the story as:

“Would this be acceptable behavior in a healthy relationship?”

Obviously fucking not.

But that’s not really the literary question.

It’s a dark character study wrapped inside an action/spy/BL story.

Ilay is basically a person whose emotional development is profoundly abnormal.

And Taeui becomes the person who forces that development to happen.

That’s why some of the later material is so fascinating. Ilay doesn’t become a fundamentally different person. Instead, Taeui becomes the person around whom Ilay starts developing behavioral constraints that he didn’t previously possess.

There are discussions of the later novels where Ilay explicitly becomes concerned with controlling his anger around Taeui and even frames Taeui’s existence as something he can’t imagine living without.

That’s not redemption.

That’s attachment.

And those are not the same thing.

Taeui is much more complicated than “victim who falls for his abuser”

This is probably where I think the comment sections sometimes flatten the story.

Taeui’s relationship with Ilay begins developing before the rape. That’s enormously important.

There’s already an unusual intimacy between them. There’s attraction, curiosity, irritation, fear, friendship, sexual tension, and eventually a kind of sexual relationship developing before the assault.

So the story isn’t structured as:

Ilay rapes Taeui → Taeui inexplicably falls in love with rapist.

It’s closer to:

Taeui becomes emotionally entangled with an extremely dangerous man → their relationship becomes sexual → Ilay commits a horrific violation → the existing emotional attachment doesn’t magically disappear → both characters have to exist inside the consequences of that contradiction.

Those are very different stories.

And the novel itself actually makes the contradiction uncomfortable rather than pretending it isn’t there. At one point Taeui reflects on their sexual relationship and distinguishes the ordinary encounters from the time Ilay raped him.

That’s psychologically messy as hell, but messy doesn’t mean incomprehensible.

this actually like reflected how I saw the manhwa. like this hit HARD like oh my goodness finally someone who could see past the "oh Stockholm Syndrome" but go IN DEPTH. This is peak, pure cinema. perfect omg

Only smart person lmfao.

literally

Honestly, I'm gen z and I honestly love these sorts of stories from the perspective of a psychology student. Because despite how very obvious Iltae are at slowly falling in love, the story doesn't remove Ilay's psychotic nature. It doesn't diminish the person he was before Taeui, and in fact, it actually makes him almost more psychotic because he went from killing and breaking people for random bullshit stuff, to killing and breaking to, quite literally, "own" Taeui.

It's also heavy slow burn and feels super realistic when it comes to fictional stories involving dark romance themes. It's not like this immediate switch where Ilay is this violent beast that needs Taeui to "tame" him, the idea that even Taeui cannot fully control someone like Ilay, but learns to loves him regardless is the romantic aspect that is trying to be portrayed.

Yes, it's horrible to think about, yes it's not something you want or want other to experience in a real life situation, but there are people in this world like Ilay, people who genuinely enjoy killing and hurting others just for their own amusement, and I think PASSION does a great portrayal of such people, while adding in the fact that Ilay, despite his inhumanity and lack of care for others, is able to learn the touch of "love", and that it's not a cut and dry love story, it's a deep psychological understanding that Ilay has to slowly learn that he doesn't have to control or own his lover to be happy and have that stable relationship regular people just seem to... get.

I completely agree that it's fucked up, but not every relationship starts off sweet and romantic, and not every person is this inherent "good" person, but that doesn't mean they can't be redeamed. No matter how red flag or black flag a person's behaviour is, psychologically speaking, anyone deserves the opportunity to be at least given a chance to change the problematic behaviours they have, but often times these people need an anchor to allow themselves to somewhat compare their progress to.

There will be times when these people, like Ilay, like Ceasar from R&C, and Zhenya from CNA, take a step in the right direction, only to fear "losing" their anchor and have them regress several steps. It does not mean they are lost causes, it just means that getting to that somewhat healthy relationship standpoint is going to take longer to reach for these types of characters.

And honestly, I think people lately forget this point and are quick to cancel any sort of problematic behaviour without trying to fully grasp what these stories actually portray. These authors aren't promoting unhealthy relationships, but are actually making people understand that healthy looks different to everyone because life experiences shape who we become and that people sometimes need a helping hand to achieve the good and healthy side of relationships.

This is not just problematic behaviour. These are literal crimes being committed repeatedly. And the problem is that in a lot of these stories that want to be a dark romance, the redemption never comes. caesar never regrets doing all the things he did to leewon, and nothing suggests he won't do it again if things don't go his way. The why and how they fall in love is usually also missing in many of these stories. Because they literally go from a rape scene to a cozy home scene throwing the words i love you around like nothing happened. Which shows no real character development.

Does ilay actually change later? Does he learn to respect boundries, consent and the well being of his partner, or he is willing to hurt tay no matter what as long as he can have him? Because unless that change is truly made then the story is not a dark romance. It is just dark. There is nothing romantic about not being free to choose, not being free to do what you want and living under constant threats of being tourted or killed if you do not do as your ''partner'' says. That is not love. There is nothing romantic about being in a situation like that. To be a dark romance the power dynamic and behaviour do need to change after going through all the pain and abuse, and the victims need to heal and gain back their own agency. Otherwise it is just a story of darkness, nothing to do with romance.

I agree, but passion isn't finished, and yes I've never read the novel, but we can't just assume it's cut and dry either.

For the case of Caesar, he was raised to be ruthless, was abused to the point he had to shut his emotions off to become the ruthless tsar that he is today. He was psychologically broken by his father from infancy. We see that.

I'm not condoning their actions one bit, it is extremely toxic, but I just mean that in todays society we categorise everything as red flag too quickly. We see the story from the mc's pov, rather than a mix of both. I just mean to say that despite his obvious flaws, he's not forbidden to learn love, and while it might not start out the best, the ending of passion is likely going to be a love centred ending where Iltae get together (again never read the novel).

Ilay definitely needs to learn to respect Taeui's autonomy and boundaries, but it's not going to be a simple cut and dry, "i own you" to "i love you", it's going to be a back and forth battle for them both as they navigate what is considered healthy to them, on a psychological stand point.

Aaa I love your depth and explanation （￣へ￣）

Being victim of bad things themselves don't justify their actions. And being with somebnody that says they love you while being willing to shoot you, drug you, imprison you, rape you etc as long as they keep you by their side would be seen as a black flag today, 20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago and in any period of time. Also if the person who raped, tortured and drugged you never feels sorry and is willing to do it again. Then the relationship is not a romantic relationship. It is a story of abuse. A story is not a dark romance just because it has dark themes. Not every story involving rape, abuse, coercion etc is a romance story. Some are just dark. In this regard caesar is a black flag who started as a yellow flag with leewon at least and then changed for the worst and stayed that way, nothing romantic about it. And ilay i don't know if he changes in the sequeles. But if a change does not happen and they keep being abusive and violent, then there is no such thing as love in the relationship. It is just a relationship with a one sided power dynamic.

IKR! (つ╥﹏╥)つ this is such a beautiful queer story omfg

hmm have you ever read “honey bear”?