As a gay man in a conservative country, I can tell you internalized homophobia is a big thing because you're scared. People keep saying it's gross, you don't know who you'll be able to trust after you come out, you don't know how you'll family will react; damn, my ex was beaten up by his father.
As soon as you know you feel attracted to men, you live your life being scared of everything and everyone. I understand them.
as a bisexual man myself, i understand internalized homophobia. i dated a guy like this once (the "straight" top dude bro). but im talking about the generalized homophobia. everyone in everywhere in this story are homophobic. it's unrealistic, the author tried too much in it (for drama purposes). you can know right away that the author never experienced homophobia first hand. even though lgbtqphobia is still really common, it isn't to this degree. not to the point where everyone would just stay quiet while some asshole is spitting bullshit.
I swear this is how it is in my country, or at least when I was in highschool. As soon as you were suspected as being gay, you were demonized and people spread rumors about you. I don't look even remotely ""feminine"" so to speak, so that never happened to me. It did happen to a few friends, even at a shorter and slightly soft friend who ended up being a cishet dude (still talk to him). It's frightening, seems like a drama but people do be like that.
I do, however, still think the story is kinda meh. The main characters are well written but they could've fit in a better written story, js
the story is kinda ok, but wow, that was the biggest amount of homophobia I've seen in a while. it seemed like every character, except minho and baldy, where homophobes wtf. and why was the homophobia so normalized?? even in homophobic countries like s.korea, not everyone is like this. jiwon was dealing ok with it after a while so im satisfied enough, but i really hope this don't mirror the author's point of view.