Saw a couple comments from people feeling bad for Gren, and while I completely understand that he’s a tragic character and his dumpster fire of a life isn’t his fault… (without judgement) it’s very easy to tell who has had to deal with an addicted friend/relative and who hasn’t.
Gren, as he is now, is a void. He’s a very specific kind of addict, who’s been in his hole so deep for so long that his entire thought process bounces between ‘my next hit’ and easy, spontaneous ‘solutions’ for his terrible life. People in a state like this don’t want to get better, they just Want. Their vision of a rescue is myopic, where those who love them are bled dry, and they see nothing wrong with that.
Look at how easily Gren suggested that Shin live on the streets with him, how even his trip to rehab wasn’t really ‘getting clean’ until Shin told him it was that or getting out of his life. His desperate attempt to get Shin to ‘promise’ to take care of him. It’s the blind, addled selfishness of a hard addict. It’s been too long since he last thought like a ‘person’ and he’s forgotten how.
Sobering up is hard work, and Gren has never thought about it seriously, and Shins tough love might feel selfish, but it’s honestly kind of breathtaking that he’s still holding hope in his heart when he could have just cut him off. I think that’s what I like the most about this webtoon; it’s such a textured and realistic depiction on the way you become hard towards people you love when you realise they’re ready to poison you before they get clean.
It’s not a nice feeling; everyone wants to be someone who would stand by struggling family, and the choice to cut someone loose before they drag you down is brutal. Poor boys.
As a disclaimer, but this is not the case with every addict, and absolutely not for every substance user. This is a veeeery specific kind of hole, and there’s signs for spotting it.
The red flags are usually theft, failure to give back borrowed money/cars/goods, going back on their word, bringing the drugs into your life without your permission, putting you in physical danger, threatening self-harm… This is Void territory, but it’s the worst case scenario and there’s plenty of addicts who benefit hugely from a consistent reliable support network and financial/material help.
All I'd like to tell you is thank you for sharing these infos, I had no idea but it does bring so much context to his behavior. Thank you for sharing your knowledge Dis. ♡
Aw thank you for saying that!
As a former addict myself this was suchhh a good take!!!
ahhh I’m glad… It’s hard to communicate this kind of stuff to people who’ve never had to deal with it, and it’s a relief to hear i’m not just projecting
Not to hype this up when there’s only like 16 chapters so far but the novel is solid and I can’t wait for the webtoon to take us there.
Gentle spoilers for anyone curious and wondering if it’s worth staying invested; totally. It’s cheesy and fluffy (ha) but it’s also an air tight story. MC has been lugging around the shame of being a feeble, “useless” mouth to feed his entire life and has to unlearn the habit of making himself bigger than he actually is. ML was turned into something dangerous by the people he trusted for their own gain and has to shoulder the fear and resentment he never deserved so they can keep feeling secure, and he has to unlearn the habit of making himself smaller.
Theyre a perfect fit, super cute with each other, and totally whipped. Looking forward to this a lot.
do u have the link to the novel??
thank you for the spoiler, I thought it was gonna be a red flag ML.... But it seems like that not gonna happen..... Really can't wait for those fluffy parts ╥﹏╥
Main story: https://razentl.com/story/dont-mess-with-the-puppy/
Final extra: https://app.yoru.world/en/story/378/chapters
some of y’all need the mc to look in the camera and say ‘i’m a strong independent girlboss’ and if he doesn’t then you’re like ‘sick of weak uke’. Cmon man, it’s getting there. The authors obvs building up the concept of the mc being deceptively more aware of his boundaries than his first impressions imply, he’s not a complete idiot or a pushover, hes shown that he has a line and while the ml is heading there at full speed he clearly hasn’t crossed it… YET. But with how much he forgets small details the mc tells him it won’t be long lol.
Personally, I like our boy. Yeah he’s a little cringe and frustratingly okay with being walked all over, but it seems to be… a conscious choice he’s made rather than the usual yaoi bottombrain. If anything the story’s been showing us so far that life has turned the mc into a survival machine. He never lets himself get cornered, and despite the trust he’s put in the ml, I think that tosser’s in for a real surprise when he realises the mc isn’t as wrapped around his finger as he thought.
Well said..
"While the ml is heading there at full speed, he hasn't crossed it.. yet "
I just love the way you phrased that. And your whole post in general
Thank you... cause people lack reading comprehension
I need to give everyone who said this had a stupid fl an enormous smack. She is not stupid, she is far from stupid, she is deeply complex and her inability to handle a man who tramples all over her pride and talks circles around social norms to throw her off is not a sign of weakness. Her quiet dignity pays off so satisfyingly in this story, which has themes and nuance and so much more than the usual fare for historical webtoons.
I promise everyone who gets 20 chapters into this and thinks ‘oh god, it’s not doing sexy ableism, is it? It’s not going to treat her like a naive idiot for having boundaries about her disability, is it?’ to know that no, it doesn’t. She is a strong woman and she doesn’t let her love for the man diminish her iron will regarding her own body, and she has a line. When he crosses it, he pays for it. Just have patience.
Oooooo *rubbing hands* I am looking forward to his just desserts... But I can see how she can so easily outsmart this guy... What he has is experience and clearly a psychopath.... Looking forward to the payback as he is crossing so many lines
I’m gonna go ahead and say it but despite Airi being like the most beloathed character for obvious reasons, the reveal that she’s a lesbian makes her one of the most tragic and sympathetic ‘villains’ i’ve ever seen. Like this is an extremely good piece of queer character writing and i’m so impressed with this story for it.
Consider how sad ‘i’m going to a world where i can find my happiness’ is in this context, where her vision of that is a world where she’s straight and men aren’t ’real men’.
Consider how sad it is that she thinks of her love for her friend as predatory and dirty, recognises the obsession with interfering in her life as toxic, and the reveal that even in her new ‘perfect’ world she did the exact same thing. The internalised homophobia is so intense here and it (narratively) rules.
Lesbians are raised, like every woman, to believe that the greatest happiness they can find in life is to be with a man. It’s not uncommon for wlw to lose track of the line between jealousy and attraction for other women, and for lesbians to fixate on fictional men purely because of their unreality and distance from real men. This can create really complicated feelings in (especially younger) women, and I can only imagine what the trauma of seeing her first love and friend could do after that. Especially internalising the comments from those around you that implied it was your fault because you were a predator.
So, that said, is it actually all that crazy Airi was so high on copium she couldn’t realise this was a ‘real’ world? When admitting that would also mean admitting she wasn’t straight and therefore ‘capable of finding happiness’?
I’m not saying she deserves to be forgiven; this obviously goes hand in hand with a need to control everything around her to feel like she’s not powerless, and men are (obviously) people too you can’t just treat them like pigs because you loathe their presence around women, but this is still extremely sympathetic to me, and tracks across her whole story.
U ATE. too many manga readers hate well written women…
aye… Airi would be treated very differently by readers if she were a man IMO. There’d be a lot more sympathy, a lot more willingness to empathise. But because she’s a woman her complexity is treated as nothing but a threat, and because she’s a lesbian her motives are predatory instead of lovesick…
Slow!!!! Imagine a slow burn and then take it down to 0.5 speed and you’re there. The thing about the worldbuilding in this story is that it’s SO well developed, that two high-ranking military leaders in a brand new experimental corp who are also researching ecological disaster are understandably too busy to have a fling. The author isn’t playing around in this story.
Think office romance, then put the office in the middle of a 6 lane highway where the leads have to direct traffic, and they’re both VERY horny and impressed by each others ability to not get hit by cars, but it’s not like there’s time to peel each others clothes off. Because cars.
I say that and still think this story is 100% worth it, if you think it’s good now then it only gets better, and the author threads the needle between tension and satisfaction so well that it feels like omegaverse Odyssey.
Yuder is a great character and super satisfying to watch, the ML is a great character and 100% more genuine than he comes across, and despite the novel being 750+ chapters and still going (urk), I never felt like it was a chore to read and the arcs are all super memorable and interesting.
That said, I have NO idea how they’re planning to adapt the whole thing, god bless and good luck to the art team.
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Like i’m not even kidding. Yuder spends like 30% of his brain capacity waxing poetic on Kishiars ability to handle his paperwork and micromanage troop morale, and Kishiar giggles like a schoolgirl when Yuder preemptively understands the deeper implications of assignments and dedicates himself to the cause. You come for omegaverse fantasy BL and you get two grown workaholics getting shared custody of The Cause.
And it’s crazy because it’s SO GOOD, and you’ll have been reading your millionth chapter and hit the part where Yuder shoots across the treetops on his way home after doing a good job on his black ops mission, sees Kishiar standing at his window with his arms open grinning like a loon, and when Yuder shoots toward him like a bullet and they go crashing to the ground together, you’ll think ‘oh, this is what I wanted when I thought shounen would be better if it was gay’
Lmaoo the office analogy
Honest to god, you said exactly what I wanted to say
YOU EXPLAINED IT PERFECTLY Like, they got no time to mess around and still show their affection and awe for each other in little details like some enamoured teenagers AND IT'S JUST SO BEAUTIFUL
(god that scene you mentioned is so good, it was my Roman Empire for MONTHS)
"oh, this is what I wanted when I thought shounen would be better if it was gay" is exactly how I felt reading this novel
I'd like to inform you that i started reading this solely because of your analogies. If only shounen writers got over their urging need to get beaten up by women (can relate).