Apo's Topics (4)

It's becoming more and more clear that Minwoo's only role in this story is to be a controlling, overbearing creep so that the ML looks good by comparison. Minwoo isn't a potential love interest, he exists solely to do bad things to justify MC's avoiding of him and make the rapist ML seem chill and nice.

The ML can literally assault the MC while he was drunk, remove a condom midsex and lie to the MC about a pregnancy that may have resulted from his actions and the narrative does nothing to condemn these actions.

Honestly, at this point, the author will probably have the MC miscarry due to something Minwoo does to really drive home the point that Minwoo is the villain.

Don't get me started on the MC who is a terrible friend and is so naive that it borders on him being incompetent.

Part of me thinks it's fine that the MC doesn't view Minwoo as anything more than a friend. He's not obligated to reciprocate Minwoo's feelings, especially since Minwoo hasn't even told him.

That aside, Joohyun is such a bad friend to Minwoo. Constantly bailing on your best friend for your boyfriend is a shit thing to do but Joohyun and Seojoon aren't even boyfriends, they're just fuck buddies. Joohyun is lying to everyone in his life just so he can go and spend time with the creep who assaulted him when he was drunk.

Minwoo is too much of a green flag so the author is going to do something to make us like him less but the everyone already thinks Seojoon is sleazy so nobody is going to see him as the better choice. The weird part is, this isn't even a proper love triangle because Joohyun has shown no interest in Minwoo, so Minwoo just comes across as a loser pinning away for someone who doesn't even care about him.

I'm hoping there's a side story where Minwoo finds himself someone decent who doesn't ignore and avoid him.

These stories are all the same, the MC never chooses the green flag best friend and instead ends up with the trash 'bad boy' love interest who always has some lame sob story that is supposed to redeem them but always makes them even more pathetic. If the art wasn't so good I'd have dropped this already.

I was reading the series back recently and we actually learn quite a bit about Gyeol throughout the series it just is very spread out so it's hard to keep track.

In Chapter 19 we see Suyeon and Gyeol in freshmen year and we learn that Suyeon is the top student which Gyeol resents. In senior year we see that Suyeon is still working hard even after finishing his thesis which Gyeol finds annoying. In Chapter 12 Gyeol talks about wanting to help Suyeon and the ceramics department only for Suyeon to remind him that Gyeol was the one desperate to have an exhibit (meaning that Suyeon was having exhibits). It seems like Gyeol was always threatened and by and envious of Suyeon's talent and being the top student.

Chapters 18 and 19 shows Suyeon upset and confessing to Gyeol before he leaves for America. Gyeol agrees to go out with Suyeon after seeing him cry (looks like he enjoys seeing Suyeon suffer). In chapter 38 we see that Gyeol has been ghosting Suyeon telling him he forgot about him. This is where Gyeol tells Suyeon he will only have sex with him if Suyeon can cum from being choked. When Suyeon can't Gyeol tells him that he will only stay if Suyeon can keep him entertained and in chapter 47 we see that Suyeon practiced choking himself so that Gyeol would reward him with sex.

We see in chapter 2 their breakup when Gyeol tell him that he is sick of both Suyeon and his work and in chapter 12 we learn that Gyeol had a girlfriend (probably while he was with Suyeon).

The thing that jumped out the most is how much Gyeol is threatened by Suyeon as an artist. He finds it annoying that Suyeon is always at the pottery wheel and distracts him in chapter 35, when he breaks up with him he makes sure to also mention being sick of his work and he was annoyed that Suyeon is the top student. Suyeon described making his art piece from the exhibit as giving birth to his and Yoonho's child because Yoonho was the inspiration only for Gyeol to say that the piece is funny because it's about Suyeon being obsessed with sex. In an upcoming chapter Yoonho's ex-girlfriend correctly identifies that Yoonho and Suyeon are lovers because their art pieces complement each other but Gyeol sees Suyeon as only being a sex crazed slut.

Suyeon actually spends a lot of the story not wanting to be around Gyeol, being forced to meet with him for university reasons and to share a loft and he calls out Gyeol's bullshit repeatedly. Gyeol was trying to say that Suyeon hasn't changed and that he is still hung up on Gyeol. Gyeol says that he had forgotten about their time together and that Suyeon must be upset about it but it's actually the opposite. When Gyeol realises that Suyeon has moved on with Yoonho, Gyeol is the upset one. He makes a move on Suyeon in chapter 38 out of anger and jealously after seeing Yoonho and Suyeon fuck because he still views Suyeon as his toy telling him in chapter 39 that Yoonho can't replace him. In chaper 47 he says Suyeon being so easy sucked all the fun out of their relationship and in chapter 48 he tells Yoonho he lent Suyeon to him and again says that Yoonho is his replacement. He only wants Suyeon now that Suyeon was moving on but if Suyeon was interested in being with Gyeol he would lose interest again.

TLDR; Gyeol feels inferior to Suyeon as an artist and degrading Suyeon sexually helped him feel better about himself. He doesn't have any real concerns about Suyeon because he went out of his way to cause him as much pain possible with the way he broke up with him and in having a girlfriend.

Suyeon knows this as well but Suyeon is filled with so much self-loathing and feelings of being dirty that he thinks he deserves this treatment and is now stimulated and addicted to it. Suyeon loves Yoonho more than he ever loved Gyeol but Suyeon's is a broken form of love.

I've had a look at the raws and it is only going to get rougher from here on out.

It's sad to see the cycles of abuse in this. Suyeon was so desperate for Gyeol's affection that he developed masochist tendencies at Gyeol's instruction. Even if Suyeon had underlying masochist traits it was Gyeol who weaponised them against him before tossing him aside and moving to America. Gyeol doesn't love Suyeon he just is jealous that his toy has found someone else.

Suyeon has now done to Yunho what Gyeol did to him, drawing out his BDSM tendencies only to abandon him. It's clear that Suyeon is full of self-loathing, at the end of chapter 42 he feels he doesn't deserve Yunho and in 43 he acknowledges that Yunho was his first real relationship which means on some level he knows that what he has with Gyeol is just lust and that Gyeol is using him. Suyeon does love Yunho as was evidenced by his art piece and his feeling of disgust when with Gyeol, but Suyeon only feels alive when he's in pain and he knows that Yunho is averse to being the one to inflict the pain for fear of going too far and seriously hurting Suyeon. I think Suyeon sees himself as corrupting Yunho in the same way that Gyeol corrupted him into associating pain with love.

Unfortunately, Yunho is also trapped in the cycle of abuse because in order to be the master Suyeon wants, he's willing to subject himself to the pain of seeing Gyeol and Yunho sleep together. The worst part is, Gyeol is very affectionate with Suyeon in chapters 53 and 54 which only fucks with Suyeon and Yunho even more because Suyeon is reacting to Gyeol's affection and not just to the BDSM.

I think chapter 1 gives away where the plot is going. Yunho reflects on what his father told him "So even when someone hurts us, we should find a way to forgive and trust the person rather than blaming them" and realises that he has trusted Suyeon too easily. Yunho will continue to hurt and blame himself for not being enough and Suyeon will continue to self-loathe and choose lust over love. It's going to end badly for Suyeon though because he will lose Yunho and once there's no competition Gyeol will leave him again.

The worst part is that if Suyeon had only have been able to convince Yunho that he trusts that Yunho wouldn't truly hurt him and that he had no lingering feelings for Gyeol then things might have turned out well because they were compatible in terms of being masochist and sadist. Unfortunately, Suyeon has never gotten over Gyeol and has fallen into the same old cycle.

I'm interested to see what eventually causes Yunho to break and what his actions are, I don't think he murders anyone as he would be in jail and not a therapist's office, but it must be something pretty bad. I think it's going to get much worse before it gets better and if season 2 is 28 chapters like season 1 was then we are probably coming up on the season 2 cliff hanger in chapter 56.