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I'll be honest I stuck around because I genuinely fell for Dooshik. Nothing against Jooha but he didn't stand out to me as particularly different from other characters in BL series, personality wise I mean. With Dooshik however I felt like I found a unique and vibrant ML. A bit goofy and silly, getting himself in many embarrassing situations, acting like an easy going f boy with a good heart but actually being someone longing for just that one person for him to love and protect. just a hopeless, almost naive, romantic lover boy. From chestnut boy to host to gangster. He just felt like a chameleon, someone with hidden depth, unfailingly positive and yet thoughtful. I just loved him. Like how many MLs have you seen portrayed seducing older guys as prostitutes? And it was so done very tastefully, it was funny yet charming. And, let's not forget how he's also crazy strong, standing alone after taking down a whole crew, very shonen coded. Ughh, such a departure from the cold, psycho rich type ML with a barely sad back story to justify his bullshit (basically Pilwon). He was a breath of fresh air to me.
Yet my love for him couldn't make all the other issues go unnoticed.
The sides show things remain the same from start to finish, the author clearly has a rape fetish as illustrated by the storyline and the graphic depictions of rape/gang rape they chose to include. 90% of it genuinely felt completely unnecessary and as if it was treated as pure smut. Something for readers to enjoy instead of feeling repulsed by it. Pilwon was treated more as a second ML than a rapist and abuser and a lot of the plot falls flat because it feels there’s genuinely no purpose for all Jooha went through aside from the author wanting to draw those scenes. It feels more like a kink (questionable kink at that but to each their own) than a sincere story about overcoming trauma from forced prostitution and abuse. Basically trauma porn. The pearls kinda lose importance pretty quickly too.
Sigh. With Dooshik, things went downhill with how he somehow was turned into a more typical ML , especially that revenge rape scene and I felt like once again it was back to the kinks taking priority over characterization and plot. Still In a twisted way, I kinda appreciated the revenge Dooshik took, because it added more dimension to his character to see how low he could stoop, how much his character could darken. Also because rapists or pedophiles never ever see retribution in BLs. In many cases they're the love interest and get a happy ending with their victim. Or in other cases it's just brushed off. No one goes to jail or ever get anything coming their way. So it was refreshing to see it in an eye for an eye format. But of course once again way too graphic and it was treated as smut as well and also proved how hard it is for people to enjoy “rape scenes” as it just served to make people feel bad for those guys. And once again Pilwon didn't even get the same treatment like why? Dooshik going “dark” was an interesting plot point that could have given us a solid arc with Jooha wrestling with his trauma and what Dooshik did and also for Dooshik to deal with his own actions and his feelings about what happened to Jooha. But nope.