these twenty year old college jocks really be saying all the rapist catch phrases like “even if you pass out we still won’t let you go” and “we know you’re saying not to stop” and “you always do this you’ll say it feels good in a bit” like be fucking normal you have a dick it doesn’t make you god get off of her (╬￣皿￣)凸
! am not into manipulating the word STOP ! fr
#real
i can’t get over the fact that jay manipulated reality just to make the love of his life miserable and still managed to end up with him (⊙…⊙ ) i actually think a lot about the trope of fantastical being fulfilling my wish so they could eat my soul like i would demand a successful global anarchocommunist revolution so fast and i wouldn’t even stutter.
honestly did not plan on reading this because i couldn’t get over the drawing style but the comments were so polarising on their opinion of the second couple that i had to see what the hype was about and i think i finally understand why people loved eunwoo and wonho so much even though they’re both rapists and emotionally abusive pieces of shit. the parallel between wonho’s passion for acting and eunwoo’s feelings for wonho is bridged by their desperation which humanises them when it is easier to see them as just trash for the way wonho abused minki and the way eunwoo abused him in turn. which is rarely done well in manga when the writing is harder because it is so limited. and because the author made it easy to empathise with them it is difficult not to forgive them when they are redeemed by loving each other (and leaving minki alone). the opposing faction in the comments who hated the second couple’s happy ending were even more interesting because they did not yield even when the cycle of abuse stopped with their relationship (the most you could ask for in yaoi the majority of the time) which i think is from the lack of accountability on wonho’s part like yes he did suffer from his own greed but not from the way he used minki as an emotional punch bag for a decade so him getting to be loved in the end feels undeserved. whereas with the first couple even though they had way more ‘screen time’ i don’t think it would ever seem not one sided when taeyoung is always the one giving and giving. therefore, rather than a full fledged relationship it just seems like minki is indulging the unrequited love of a younger man that doesn’t abuse him. and after the way minki was controlled by wonho’s misplaced guilt for a decade, who could blame him? one last thing, why are people calling wonho a bottom please guys verses are real and yaoi might not act like it but they are i promise.
this is just my brief analysis of the energy i got from the comment section.
my personal feelings on this manga is that it was well written as in it did not leave behind plot holes, no character was ever so shallow that it was unrealistic and the emotional drive of each character was very succinct and relatable as well as the mirroring of their desires between the cousin’s desires to give the men they love what they most wanted and minki’s desire to be fulfilled (personal) and wonho’s desire to be fulfilled (professional). i do however hate them all because unlike you guys i can’t forgive what any of them did (￣∇￣") taeyoung being nine inches deep in minki who was drunk out of his mind? jail. wonho punching taeyoung for trying to stop him from raping minki again? jail right away. eunwoo continual dehumanisation of wonho’s body because he was a fucking coward for a decade? straight to jail. minki using taeyoung’s feelings to feel better about himself knowing that the much younger man has been in love with him since he was a teenager? believe it or not, jail!
I like you whoever you are.
May good thing happen in your life.
THIS! You are so right! I love eunwoo and wonho bc they're the realistic representation of toxic people who made bad decisions after another. Some people here hates them bc they showed some human side of their characters. Me, however, loves a good ol' realistic representation of people in real life. Despite not wanting to forgive eunwoo and wonho from their past mistakes, I still do believe that everyone deserves a chance to change and live a better life. After all, these characters are still humans and they've already regretted their actions.
there were so many plot holes it was basically swiss cheese
having just read kiss me liar and your wish is my command, this really was a saving grace
how is this story so bad that the only character i gave a fuck about was naomi parker?
why does this author only write rape and obsession and try to gaslight everybody into calling it love by killing off any other possible option? are we not at least legally adults? let’s act our age.
jumpscare of the spin off universe aside, i genuinely do not believe that chiwoo would have ended up with jihyun in any universe. chiwoo’s reluctance to acknowledge jihyun’s confessions over the years made it really clear that he never considered him in a sexual or romantic manner so even if jihyun did not rape the guy he claimed to love it still wouldn’t change the fact of chiwoo’s feelings which would always have led to some kind of relationship breakdown because even without the violation there was still the isolation and the manipulation that came from jihyun’s possessiveness that was born of his fucked up family ruining his adolescent socialisation. so unless if jihyun was never jihyun to begin with, there never would have been a relationship between them.
this might actually be worse than being thrown off a cliff because at least then i’ll be dead
your comment is the most entertaining part of this manhwa lmaooo
╮(￣▽￣)╭
there is a distinct difference between worrying about your wife because you love her so much and want more than anything for her to live versus controlling your wife because you look down on her and doesn’t see her to be capable of taking care of herself or knowing her limits. it is infantilising and not the first nor the second not even the third time riftan has completely disregarded what maxi had to say or disrespected her abilities in front of other people when she has a long and arduous history of being traumatised and sold off at the hands of an abusive father who acted exactly like that. and yes i am aware that he doesn’t know her history because they have literally never talked about a single thing worth an ounce salt about themselves to each other the way normal people do let alone married but it doesn’t make how he talks down to her any less belittling. a lot of her “independent queen” era is just her constantly having to prove herself to him with no space to grow as a person nor as a healer. riftan is more of a roadblock than he is a supporter. “he loves her so much” “he killed the dragon for her” blah blah blah ok and? she didn’t ask him to do it. in fact knowing maxi she would have explicitly told him not to do it. if his love is a chokehold then perhaps she should love literally anyone else.
Not that I second your opinion here, nor do I object.. I would just like to comment and commend your eloquence here . You write so well, hun!
yeaaaa and it's kinda icky cuz she literally has no autonomy, he's the guy so what he says goes in this time period I guess. idk he could disagree with her pov, but at the end of the day Riftan gets to choose to risk his life in battle and if Maxi respects that, then he should respect her choice too. It's just a red flag that ordering her around doesn't make him feel anything. Like if my mans started telling me what to do, even out of concern for my safety, that's not my mans if he doesn't see me as someone who can literally do whatever I want. Like I'm so sorry but just cuz we married don't mean I need to ask you permission to fight when you're not asking me. Bro...you can't force your partner to do anything and a real man would know that.
the thing is riftan is genuinely so emotionally stunted i can’t even tell if he is concerned for her safety or feel entitled over that safety because he has done so much to ‘earn’ her. and not being able to tell makes his pattern of behaviour where he orders maxi around as if she is beneath him even more jarring. like it is giving insecure tyrant. it is giving man child. she is considering having his kids and riftan be out here acting like one.
exactly, like we’ve had enough of men telling women what to do in romances. I still rlly have high hopes for this one, like I thought by now he would have figured out what kind of life she had growing up (he still thinks she had a noble woman upbringing), but hopefully since this doesn’t look like it’ll be over anytime soon we’ll see some character growth. I just wish he understood that you can show concern and even reject Maxi’s thinking without minimizing her as a person which literally everyone around her did to make her self esteem go that low. now she’s in a place where him saying “I’d rather die” won’t cause her to loose all her progress, but in the past it could have and i’m soooooo disappointed he would say something like that KNOWING who Maxi is
The previous comments I can understand, but not this one. Riftan being entitled of "earning" Maxi should never be thought of as the man himself do not think he would ever deserve a woman like her.
A knight's mindset will always be to put a lady's safety a top priority. Regardless of what her desire is, if he knows your life will be in grave danger, no questions asked, you need to kept away from that. Now add that to the fact that this knight is your husband. The man who was always a breath away between life and death as he did not see his life that significant, but a dream of you and life wins his subconscious and continues to embark a journey he never planned. But again a word about your possible presence within his reach and he threw away all that irresolute just to get a glance of even just your face. And he, a lone mercenary became the greatest out of sheer will to see you.
No man child will ever think of building a grand life just in the case he will have you in his life and provide all that's worthy of your value.
first off, in what handbook does it specify that “a knight’s mindset will always be to put a lady’s safety a priority”? under charlamagne knights were given full education and under william the conqueror knights were of such volume they were left illiterate but the uniting factor is that knights killed people, they were an emperor or a king’s most reliable weapon of war because they were so good at killing people. a knight’s actual mindset is slaughter. throughout history knights have pillaged entire villages and raped women and girls as war prizes in their victory. rape is still used as a weapon of war today and the knights are the modern history it came from. the idea that “a knight’s mindset will always be to put a lady’s safety a priority” is from the concept of chivalry which is an informal code of conduct that valued things like loyalty (to the king that ordered you to kill people) and valour or bravery (in combat where you rob people of land and resources). chivalry never meant protect the weak nor did it mean anything along the lines of “put a lady’s safety a priority” unless if the lady’s safety was king’s orders. the romanticisation of chivalry as the height of masculine behaviour was adapted in 19th century literature to explain and glorify the way knights seduced noble women and girls that their honorary title gave them access to but no future with. it was never proper masculine behaviour, it was always manipulation in order to get a woman in bed.
secondly, if you are going to say “regardless of what her desire is” then you have swerved far past the point where he is acting like a man child as the evidence of man child behaviour stare you dead in the eye. adult people who see each other as equals do not disregard the other’s desire because their explicit desires stated is the first sign of consent thus if he values her safety over her consent then he does not respect her consent seeing maxi to be beneath him the way an owner might pick up a pet even if it doesn’t want to be picked up because what the owner wants trumps in value.
lastly, it is delusional to say that “no man child will ever think of building a grand life” because that is all child like mentalities ever think of. the grandest things. and even more delusional to say “worthy of your value” when he literally knows nothing about maxi to even begin to comprehend her value. riftan sees maxi as this beloved spoiled daughter that he had to kill the unkillable in order to be with. we both know that daughter does not exist. therefore only possible to infer that riftan does not even begin to grasp her value when the things that she assigns of value in regards to herself such as healing and magic castle management riftan has only never showed her support to pursue what makes her happy but has instead impeded maxi multiple times in pursuing them further because all he wants is a damsel trapped behind bars waiting for him to get home. like some kind of fairytale. as if a child.
this floored me, everything I didn’t know I was feeling in wordsbut yea I feel like sometimes “what someone wants” can be seen as irrelevant in comparison with what we think that person needs (how Riftan sees Maxi), but that’s literally what makes everyone a person, yes maybe it’s for Maxi’s benefit that she not get involved, maybe she’ll come to regret ever wanting to become a Mage, but even just her believing that she can change for the better is so so important. Maxi is learning her worth, that she’s not just here because she’s alive, but that she has a purpose. I think she even told Riftan that the thing she hates the most in the world is herself. I don’t believe that you can truly care for Maxi without thinking about why she said that. I have ppl in my life that I would quite literally die for, like no thought to it, if my sister was abt to die ooooo we pulling a I’ll catch a grenade for you. even then, if she came to me and expressed that she needed to do something or her spirit would die, I would do everything I could to help her achieve whatever that is. Girly you wanna fight on the front lines???? when we joininggg???? This is a silly scenario, but what people want is connected to their purpose in life and if not doing what Maxi feels she needs to do would kill her spirit, girly we becoming mages together. There are people who, knowing they’d die, risk themselves to save someone they don’t know because that’s who they are and wouldn’t be living if they weren’t themselves. If my sister was that person(if she were in Maxi’s position), I love her and respect her enough to accept it. Like to me when I see Riftan saying how much he cares abt Maxi I just get annoyed. I’m not even married to Maxi yet why would I treat her better that you her husband??? Possessiveness (however hot the character (I understand, I get it)) is not real love. And y’all I’ve read them all like I am the first person to say “it’s fiction it’s not real life” but you don’t see me talking abt how Edward Cullen is the epitome of what a real man is. No matter how much I love my bad boyzzz and my red flags not for one second would I ever believe that what Riftan feels is true unconditional love than if he let her go. Quite literally: if you love her let her go. lmaoooo like it’s not a lieeee, that’s what unconditional love actually is and you can’t fall into that trap of thinking otherwise. “I can fix him” is something I say everyday, but as a person who has people I love, all those characters don’t got nothing on me, they don’t kno me!!!!
For all I know, I am reading Under the Oak Tree. I wouldn't dare interpret the author's writing nor evaluate the poor characterization of the leads because I have extensive perspective and knowledge on what should be and what not should be.. And, compare them to this and that. My focus is on the flow of THIS story.
I love this writing so much, and Maxi and Riftan, however it did not occur to me that some would think otherwise of how the author had portrayed them. Maybe that's the beauty of it too. Everyone has something to say. But this was too heavy to handle. As it seems you are adamant in dismissing the balance of the script and I feel like I am being dismissed as well for trying to reel in a perspective that seems like 360 to yours, and as much as I want to receive and respect the opinion, I am not getting the same notion. So as to stop spoiling my love for this manhwa, I will hand you over the floor and mute this thread.
Sankyu for the handful of studies, by the way. Not that I deemed them relevant to my understanding of the story, nevertheless, thank you~