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kaigouFor whatever reason, the past year or two I’ve been reading a lot more that falls (to some degree) into the category of romance -- I don’t mean ‘category romance’, or the specific genre, just that even the mainstream fiction I’ve been reading contains a very strong romance subplot -- if the primary plot isn’t a romance itself. Rather peculiar, but then again, maybe it’s simply that this is where a lot of the writing is happening that also happens to appeal to me. Though I should qualify that, for those of you worried this means I’m going soft and mushy: what I particularly like about romance plots/subplots is not the romance, but the stage during which there is romantic potential, very little actual. Or perhaps I should say, I prefer the denial stage: when you have chemistry in one sense and avoidance in another, whether this be in the pre-relationship area or the relationship+conflict area. (I retain my dislike/disinterest for writers who conflate intimacy with sexuality, though, because that just isn’t how people always tick.)
This is ostensibly a discussion/critique of Totally Captivated, a Korean manhwa that’s up to its 5th volume (and will therefore contain spoilers through volume 5, chapter 35), but first I’m going to explain the attitude/observations I’ve had that cause my reaction to TC itself. Mostly, I guess, to place it in context as a romance sub/plot, even if (technically) it stands outside the Japanimanga traditions of uke/seme (in M/M relationships) as well as separate from the western AlphaMale romance stereotypes. It’s still squarely within romance, regardless of cultural base, and I think to some degree our interpretations of, tastes for, preferences about, the fine lines we tread in romance aren’t cultural so much as just part of being human. But I’ll get to TC itself, in a bit. First...
It’s hard to avoid the romantic sub/plot breed (in any genre, it seems) of the Alpha Male (or, in the japanimanga subculture, the ‘seme’; in M/M, the ‘pitcher’). Most writers -- okay, there are a few exceptions but I’ve figured out who they are and I avoid them now -- but most writers are aware that relationships of any sort have a handful of basic stages. There’s the introduction stage, which is usually somewhat platonic in most general-genre stories all the way up to lurve!lust!omg! at first sight if the genre-mix leans heavily towards a strong romantic element. Then there’s the dancing stage, dunno what else to call it, when both characters are starting to get the idea that they’re attracted and/or feeling emotions, but do the back-and-forth as a result of self-doubt, past history, current events keeping-them-apart, whatever. In stories where ‘romance’ is one of the major genre labels, the third step of the get-together is often where the story ends (barring any sequels). Every now and then a writer has the guts, or a good-enough plotline, to carry past the HEA and into the after-the-after, where reality intrudes, there’s conflicts, things aren’t so perfect. Or maybe it’s just that the world is once again in danger of being snuffed out and our intrepid pair must deal with it, etc etc, usually with some parallel emotional in-relationship conflict thrown in.
Concerning this back-and-forth tension-building aspect in romantic subplots -- I think writers know that for any readers hooked on the emotional context (as opposed to action or plot or theme, whatever), that the romantic/sexual tension is a big page-turner. That means there’s got to be some reason these two characters don’t fall straight into HEA, even if they did fall straight into the sack; even in stories where there’s no sack involved, there’s still an emotional connection that has to be denied, deflected, whatever, during this second stage. Gotcha.
The problem? Sometimes it seems as though some writers aren’t willing, or able, to bring themselves to create a protagonist with issues strong enough to genuinely cause avoidance/deflection: like in stories where the sack appears in the first chapter, lust!, omg!, passion!, etc, the writer works so hard at creating a conflation between ‘psychological intimacy’ and ‘sexual intimacy’ that when the protagonist balks, it’s really not believable. “I don’t want to be vulnerable,” the character says, but it’s pretty ridiculous because the author’s already made it clear that the character was pretty much all-types-of-intimacy already if only by virtue of the authorial insistence on making sexual/emotional the same.
Yeah, so people do balk after being a bit too open or honest but a) we don’t, especially sexually aware/experienced humans, automatically confer emotional intimacy as part-and-parcel of sexual intimacy (fuckbuddies, anyone?), and b) when we do leap into intimacy and then backpedal like mad, we’re often aware that we look like idiots in doing so. (And if we aren’t, I’d hope we all have friends close enough to say, “you’re acting like some twit-brained teeny cheerleader, dude, you slept with the guy, he likes you, you like him, freaking shut up and get over whatever your hang-up is.”)
So. Something must prevent the two interests from being permanently interested. Fair enough. This is where the ‘seme/semi’ issue comes in, for me: a writer who can’t/won’t create a character willing to be a bad guy in his own right ends up having to dump all the bad-guy (that is, “bad in the sense of preventing the HEA”) aspects onto the other character... and that other is invariably the Alpha/Seme. Instead of a protag who says, “I’m genuinely not certain this is a good idea for reasons A, B, or C,” (however rational or not) -- which is, at heart, a situation where the brakes are being applied by the reader’s main POV character and, this is important to note, in a story where the romantic plot is pushing a lot of the general plot and therefore the (average) reader’s page-turning interest is in getting to that HEA... are you following that?
If the reader is pushing towards the HEA, to have a POV protag who moves away from the HEA is to have a protag who may not be sympathetic to readers -- at least, not sympathetic in the hands of a less mature/less skillful writer. (Usually the result, then, is the reader wanting to bonk the protag over the head for being moronically obstinate for no particular reason other than diffused insecurity or, uh, just general stupidity, much like a good friend’s reaction. Our friends are often less sympathetic to our fears because we cannot fully communicate the depths, history, reasons and so on; the difference in fiction is that a good writer should be able to communicate these such that we don’t throw the protag, or the book, against the wall in frustration and exasperation.)
Given that what seems like a lot of writers out there aren’t always willing to push their POV-protag into being a genuine, independent obstacle for the final HEA-point, this means the love-interest has to do it. That’s where you get stuff like the alt-protag being all controlling but coming off as just abusive, or running hot and cold, or treating the pov-protag like crap (even if later we’re told “s/he acts that way because s/he cares, y’know, and is, uh, just kinda stunted about it”). It’s where the alt-protag treads the dangerous ground of non-con, as if s/he (I write s/he to be fair, but most often the alpha/seme is male, older, and quite often taller/bigger/more muscled to boot, more on that in a bit) can just mindread the pov-protag-uke and know that this kind of sexual intimacy (or any intimacy) is exactly what the pov-protag is just dying for.
Get into the fantasy stream of romance-blends, and that’s where you find the seme-protag with extrapowerful sense of smell -- “I can tell you’re turned on, you smell like it!” or acute senses or literal mind-reading or whatever. To me, that remains borderline, if not outright, non-consensual, because most experienced at least somewhat self-aware adults are cognizant that being sexually turned on does not predicate being willing to be intimate. This forceful “I know what you really want” also requires we ignore that one may be intimate on a physical level but retain the right to keep emotional or psychological intimacy out of the equation -- it removes the pov-protag’s ability/power to stave off the HEA via refusing to take that final, emotional step into complete oblivion, err, conubial bliss.
(The exception and/or free-pass is to those pov-protags who are sexually, socially, or emotionally ‘virgins’ in the sense of not having the experience to understand this distinction, but for all that, I can’t think of any stories with strong romantic sub/plots in which such inexperienced pov-protags figure out the hard way that being naked together does not immediately lead to joy-peace-happiness in all things relationship-wise. Then again, most romance sub/plots are kinda setting their foundation on this entire conflation, so I guess they’re not likely to wreck it by pointing out the major flaw, hunh.)
Anyway. Story after story, the pov-protag means well, falls for the alt-protag, maybe even recognizes the sensations of luuuurve way earlier, may make a slight show of being skittish but one kiss and a bit of that amazing! hawt! nookie and the pov-protag is just putty in the alt-protag’s stern, cold, controlling, overprotective, overbearing, what-have-you hands -- with the caveat that in many (less-skillfully written) stories of this breed, the alt-protag’s badness is author-designed purely for the sake of causing the pov-protag to be happy, sad, emo, happy, sad, emo, etc and thereby creating the illusion of a chemistry-laden dance. Which means that when things do, by whatever further author-designed tricks, move into the HEA stage, the pov-protag isn’t just a manipulated, inexperienced, naive twit who got jerked around for a hundred-plus pages, s/he is also a manipulated, rationalizing, self-deceptive moron who uses the alt-protag’s earlier abuse/inconsistency as twisted expressions of love.
What’s lying underneath that, however, is a simple critique that if you try to rewrite the story from the seme-protag’s POV, it just doesn’t hold up. The motivation isn’t complex (”I liked you and didn’t know how to show it”), or the reasoning is weak (”I was mean because I saw you talking to some guy who wasn’t me”), or just plain nonsensical (”I’m just like that”).
(I’m waiting for the day when some strong pov/uke/fem-protag replies, well, you see that door about to slam you in the face? I’m just like that. Get lost.)
Alright, granted, I can allow that a lot of these types of the romance sub/plot are really just wish-fulfillment, a sort of allowing oneself to become a neutral, non-powerful party: it creates an excuse. “I can’t help it, s/he seduced me, I was powerless to stop it,” except in this case it’s powerless to prevent falling in love (that being considered the same as ‘getting nekkid’). Where the pov-protag never actually does anything, if you stop and really look at these storylines; the pov-protag is too busy jumping when the seme-protag says jump, and then plummeting into rejection based on such inconsistent evidence/behavior, and probably (depending on the rating/audience) launched into sexual/ecstasy at just one touch/glance/word from the seme-protag, even if the pov-protag started the scene insistent s/he would stand strong.
(If you ever have a chance, read the opening act of Richard III, yes, the one by Shakespeare. It’s when Richard finishes his famous soliloquy -- “now is the winter of our discontent” -- and turns to find Anne approaching, leading the procession for her father’s body. A father, not-so-coincidentally, that Richard -- according to Shakespeare’s sources -- was supposed to have killed. Unh-hunh. When the scene begins, she’s spitting nails at Richard, with what appears to be quite righteous indignation. By the end of the scene? He’s not just proposed... she’s accepted. Say what? The scene is absolutely, completely, totally devoid of character logic, and it’s possibly one of the hardest scenes in all of Shakespeare’s plays not because it’s traumatic or pivotal but because it makes No. Freaking. Sense. Read it, and you’ll see what seems to be 90% of the Alpha-Seme breed of romance sub/plots from the uke/protag pov, wrapped up into a few hundred lines. “Asshole, asshole, oh, maybe you’re not so bad, oh, you did that because you love me, oh, that makes it all right, so now I love you, too...” Bolt the HEA to this point, and send that puppy out, the story’s done. Egawdz.)
About the pov-protag being “helpless” or “powerless” against the seme-protag... one sleeper sort of romance that pairs an easy-going seme-protag (who is also, somewhat unconventionally, the pov character) with an extremely headstrong uke-alt-protag who adamantly refuses to allow/display the vulnerability required to admit he likes or wants to be with anyone, in any way (combined with a very strong self-reliant personality). Early on, the seme-protag realizes that their (so far only platonic) friendship is one of the few the uke-protag values; the seme-protag threatens to leave, and goes so far as to define his actions as blackmail. That is, if the uke-protag doesn’t want to lose this rare friendship, the uke-protag must also give in and be sexually intimate, as well.
It’s a strange action, since it posits the pov character as a bad-guy, to the degree that he knows he’s being manipulative... but down the road a bit, the pov-protag explains that he did so because he knew the uke-protag required an excuse. That it would be totally out of character for the alt-protag to confess he has feelings (of love, or sexual), and that the only way the alt-protag will accept closing the distance is if he can rationalize it to himself as something out of his control, as something he doesn’t have a choice in, because the alternative would be worse. Very few stories I’ve read have seme-protags that bluntly honest (and in some ways, believeable on a human level) about a motivation for manipulating another, let alone for effectively provoking/causing or in this case, setting it up for the uke-protag to allow himself the self-delusion/illusion of being powerless.
I mention that because that story taught me that such can be done, that we can see a manipulative pov-protag as sympathetic, though I think in some ways this is partly because the pov-protag is fully aware from the get-go that his actions may, down the line, destroy the very relationship he’s trying to blackmail/coax the uke-protag into. At some point -- and he reminds himself of this a number of times -- the uke-protag is probably going to hit a limit and decide it’s time to stop lying to himself about his concession of power, stop rationalizing, and walk away; I think it’s the seme-protag’s inner battle between “if this is all I’ll ever get, then I guess I’ll take this as better than nothing” versus “is this really the best for/what’s wanted by the one I love? if I truly loved, would I do this?” It’s risky, possibly abusive, and yet both sympathetic and believeable.
Plus, for me, it also tells me as a reader that this seme-protag has a pretty good handle on the alt-protag’s personality: but then, is such perceptivity to be used as means to manipulate another, or is understanding someone on that level just a step along the way to the HEA? If someone knows you well enough, has you figured out, well enough to manipulate you, does this mean they’re working against you, or are they working for you towards a common goal that suits you both? I like the gray areas. Excuse me. Ahem. Carrying on.
Okay, about Totally Captivated. The official teaser says:
Jiho suggests that Ewon work for Mookyul -- and Jiho’s motivation is both clear and believable, in that he’s dating a filthy-rich-movie-star-handsome guy and wants Ewon to burn up in jealousy; Ewon accepts/agrees to work the job (with no pay, at that!) purely because he doesn’t want to get on the bad side of the mafia and he sure as hell doesn’t want to get the crap beaten out of him again. Okay, so far, everyone’s motivation and behavior makes sense.
It also makes sense that Ewon -- who is a player to some degree, but he’s not what I’d call a malicious player, someone who just wants to rack up the notches on the bedpost. It’s more like he’s just... well, lonely, but also unwilling to make a connection with those people who are around him. Time and again he’s shown turning down his best friend’s proposals, on the pretense that he’s not a catcher and won’t be the bottom to his friend’s equally-strong preference for topping. The exchange is repeated often enough, here and there, that I started to suspect Ewon’s excuses weren’t a genuine disinclination so much as a good-enough excuse for keeping one more person at arm’s length. His willingness/interest in playing around seems more tied to recognizing a need for human affection but that one-night-stands are the easiest way to get that without emotional strings attached (although when he first narrates this about himself, he describes it just as a bad case of incessant curiosity).
After various trials (and some hysterical ones at that) while Ewon’s working as the office’s janitor-errand-boy-cook, Mookyul gradually becomes more and more fascinated by Ewon, for two reasons. The first is that he can’t stop thinking he knows Ewon from somewhere, but he’s not sure where, exactly. The second is that Ewon walks the edge of blatant attraction to Mookyul -- he’s well aware of Mookyul’s good looks, even if he’s not so sure about Mookyul’s personality -- yet he refuses to act on it. Much of that is because Jiho’s around, and while Ewon recognizes he doesn’t have strong feelings for Jiho anymore, he still doesn’t want to see that look of hurt on Jiho’s face. He might not be in love, but he does care.
It turns out, eventually, that Mookyul and Ewon met as children in a rather disastrous send-up that resulted in Mookyul quitting school (after beating Ewon up, for the first time, heh) -- and Mookyul declares that Ewon ‘owes’ him. For the emotional trauma Mookyul felt, for being the impetus that caused Mookyul to head out into the snow on his sixth-grade lonesome, for the fact that Ewon remembers little of the incident? Whatever it is, Mookyul’s price is sex, and Ewon reluctantly agrees...
Here’s where I think I first realized that Hajin Yoo, the author, isn’t your average meet-love-happy seme/uke stereotyper. When Mookyul thinks he’s gotten Ewon to agree to sex (despite the fact that Mookyul and Jiho are currently an item), he’s pleased with himself, and ready to go -- and in fact, it appears he’s even set up the conflict to force someone’s hand, be that Ewon’s or Jiho’s. (It’s not really clear.) Ewon, though -- despite internal thoughts that recognize he is attracted to Mookyul on a base/sexual level -- treats the situation with a partly-resigned, partly-exasperated, “well, fine, let’s get this over with.” I say Yoo isn’t the usual calibre of author because not once does she conflate sexual with emotional: Ewon may be sexually interested, but emotionally he’s pretty much not-there. For him, it’s a physical act, and an enjoyable one, but it doesn’t carry the emotional context that it seems to be carrying for Mookyul. His only stipulation is that Jiho should never know, and that seems only because he doesn’t want to hurt Jiho yet again.
Naturally (because the world deserves conflict), Jiho walks in on them. Short version is that Mookyul offers to dump Jiho, Ewon gets pissed that Mookyul would just throw away someone, Mookyul makes it clear he doesn’t care one way or another, and the story ends up with Jiho later telling Mookyul that he didn’t actually care about Mookyul, that his entire purpose was to make Ewon jealous. Mookyul, naturally, feels offended and used; Ewon’s reaction is to try and talk Jiho into apologizing, taking it back.
But no, Jiho knows the truth and he’s got to get closure, and then move along -- but before he does, he tells Ewon that he could put up with Ewon’s infidelity for only so long before he just couldn’t take it anymore. Jiho says, “Why do you hold out your hand, but run away every time I try to catch it? Haven’t you ever met someone you truly cared for? Don’t tell me you never met that one person you couldn’t do without...” it’s only later, in his own place and thinking back, that Ewon admits he can’t. Because what could be more frightening, he asks himself, than risking everything on one person?
A few other details about Ewon: he’s 22, like Mookyul and Jiho, and a senior in college (a fellow classmate of Jiho’s in the economics department). He’s on scholarship; he mentions having held down 5 different part-time jobs at once to pay for his schooling. He’s able to work for Mookyul’s office for free only because of scholarship money tiding him over, but when that runs out, he’s facing the question of how to extricate himself from the mafia and be able to pay rent and tuition. Although in the flashback childhood segment, Ewon recalls telling Mookyul -- an orphan -- that he’s also an orphan, he qualifies this by admitting internally that he wasn’t... but as far as he was concerned, he might as well have been (or something to that extent).
Somewhere, too, back in Ewon’s past, something happened, and this is possibly one of the only times I can really complain about the official translation. In the official version, Ewon tells Mookyul, “I can’t really remember much of when we met, thanks to that near-death incident you gave me” (I guess talking about the beating Mookyul gave him as a kid). In the scanlation version, however, the line goes more like, “I can’t really remember much about my childhood, after a near-death incident I had.” The first version may make sense in light of Ewon’s comments that Mookyul did beat the crap out of him, but there’s another point farther down (after realizing how they first met) in which Mookyul demands that Ewon repeat what he’d said when they’d parted as kids, as Mookyul was leaving the school grounds. (Ewon had followed him, yelling, “come back, you’ve got to come back, I’ll be waiting for you, right here!”)
Ewon asks himself, what was Mookyul talking about? And then there’s a single frame of what looks like a kid’s arm in a winter jacket, stretched out, palm up. There are speech bubbles around it, saying, “is that a kid in there?” and “is he alive?” ... and that’s the extent of the teaser we get about what may’ve happened. Ewon doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t ruminate on it, doesn’t even bring it up; he seems determined to live on his own two feet and he don’t need nobody, thanks, he’ll manage his own way, somehow. He certainly doesn’t wallow in self-pity.
What makes Ewon’s characterization so delicious, as a reader, is that he’s as much a study in contrasts as any full-fleshed literary creation, and a lot of that has to do with the author carefully creating a dichotomy between what Ewon does/says to others, versus what he keeps to himself. When I loaned the first three volumes to a Korean friend to read, she commented that Ewon would never make it in Korean society; he’s too stupid. I’m not sure “stupid” is the right word for it; I wouldn’t even say he’s naive. I think it’s more a matter of being willfully ignorant, a kind of simple refusal to acknowledge certain things and thus reduce their impact, somehow.
For instance, when one of the mafia-guys is being extorted by a “girlfriend” to pay off her debts, the guy asks Ewon -- who now handles the general accounting & petty cash for the office -- to get the several thousand dollars out of the accounts, and he’ll pay it back in a week, before Mookyul finds out. Ewon knows the guy’s being taken, and while he won’t steal/take the money himself, he compromises by turning over the accounting temporarily to the mafia-guy, who had done it prior to Ewon’s arrival. It’s not that Ewon falls for the girl’s pity-story, or has any illusions about the money, but he’s just not willing to get involved to the point of saying anything. He’ll give way, because it’s easier -- just as he gives way to Mookyul after being harrassed and pestered by Mookyul over and over. Fine, fine, here, have what you want.
Which brings up one of the other rare times I think the scanlation got it better than the official: after the Jiho/Mookyul breakup, Ewon quits the office. When the guys ask Mookyul why Ewon won’t be around anymore, in the official version, one of them says something like, “his sweet personality was growing on me.” In the scanlation, the line is, “he and his subservient personality were starting to grow on me.” There’s a big difference there, and looking over Ewon’s interactions with Mookyul and the crew, he does come across as very subservient. He cleans, he cooks, he rarely takes a stand on anything, preferring to just slip back and give way, letting the obstacle roll over him. If you take all that at face-value, then sure, it seems as though the one break in Ewon’s stereotype is that he’s insistent he’s a natural-born pitcher with no interest in being a catcher/uke -- a definite break considering how submissive he comes across in nearly every interaction, including with Jiho (who is far more emotionally forceful and/or straightforward than Ewon).
The turning point is that Jiho/Mookyul breakup, followed by Ewon and Jiho having a final goodbye, in the rain. Ewon comes down with the flu & doesn't show up again for work; meanwhile Mookyul’s crew are getting on his case having discovered that despite his generosity to them, he’d never paid Ewon a penny. All this time Mookyul’s been fascinated by Ewon’s apparent contradictions, but it’s his own men who really throw the final switch for him, when he realizes that Ewon’s become a bit of an office mascot for them. (They make a point of turning off the TV and telling their own boss to keep it down & not interrupt when Ewon announces he’s got to study for a test!) Mookyul can't let it go. I'm not sure whether he's unwiling to let Ewon's departure with Jiho, post-breakup-scene, to be left as the last word, or whether he just can't get Ewon out of his head, or if he's truly infatuated and refuses to accept that Ewon's left -- whatever the reasons for his display of disgruntlement, he still forces his men to show him where Ewon lives, and thereby discovers Ewon out sick with bad fever.
The next thing Ewon knows, he wakes up in Mookyul’s expensive high-rise apartment -- and his own tiny deep-in-the-slums lease has been closed, his stuff’s moved out, and he’s now living with Mookyul... and as far as Mookyul’s concerned, having “saved” Ewon from that danger known as the common cold, Ewon has to live with him. Ewon, of course, sees no reason why this would logically follow, demanding of Mookyul, “who do you think you are, to tell me what to do? you’re not my family or my lover,” to which Mookyul explains that’s exactly what he’s suggesting, that they become lovers.
Up to this point, Mookyul’s characterization can be summed up like so: imperious, arrogant, overbearing, belligerent, demanding. But like Ewon’s secret side, it’s only from asides and throwaway comments that Mookyul’s generosity and utmost loyalty is revealed. For the mafia-guy who steals the money (while doing the books), Mookyul says he knew full well the guy was stealing even when he was doing the accounting regularly, but Mookyul looked the other way because he knew of the mafia-guy’s ill mother. Mookyul doesn’t think twice about handing a large sum of cash to a former employee, to help him get a new start back in his hometown with his wife and infant child. And his own employees make noises about his generosity towards them, as well (which makes Mookyul’s stinginess towards Ewon especially glaring).
Mookyul never returned to school after quitting on that winter’s day, but at some point not long after that, he attempted to pick a man’s pocket, and that man turned out to be the credit union’s CEO, Chairman Lee... who not only caught him in the act, but offered him a place to stay, as well. It’s through the Chairman’s efforts that Mookyul did eventually get a highschool education, with private tutors. He does demonstrate some aptitude with computers and business, as befits the adopted son of a credit union’s CEO, but otherwise his formal education (especially the socialization aspect) is severely lacking. Ewon’s friend, Dohoon, calls Mookyul “an oversized grade-schooler,” and Ewon has to admit that the description is pretty accurate: emotionally, Mookyul remains pretty immature, though he wears a disinterested, arrogant expression in public.
For the most part, through to about the third volume, the sexual chemistry -- or perhaps just plain curiosity on each character’s part -- has stayed somewhat consistent, but in terms of their dynamic, it’s pretty much Mookyul running roughshod over Ewon, who swings between running like hell and giving a resigned shrug and saying, “fine, if that’s what you want, get it over with” (with unvoiced but likely internal plans for running afterwards, then). If you ignored a lot of the tiniest tells, here and there, you’d probably think the storyline is going to follow the usual seme-protag being the bad-guy obstacle (in this case, by just plain being so all-out unsufferable and arrogant that he’s just unbearable and in turn forces the uke-protag to flee); that is, until a few details when Mookyul joins Ewon and his classmates for a few beers.
After some tense moments during the introduction -- during which Mookyul is his usual imperious, in-your-face, abrasive personality -- the group settles down and Mookyul (who really has nothing to contribute) sits there and watches. He realizes, privately, that Ewon’s having a great deal of fun with his friends: “Is this what ‘normal’ people my age do?” He has no idea. His confusion/uncertainty is compounded by the news that Ewon isn’t just a good student, he’s the top-ranked student in his department, with straight-A’s. For someone who managed a high school education only through private tutors, the news seems to shock Mookyul and probably intimidate him (even if he doesn’t call it that, in so many words).
Now, here’s where Yoo got it right that other writers get it wrong (or don’t even get it): most of the time, we don’t really get any insight into Mookyul’s thought processes, or we only get the barest sarcastic remarks. But right on the tail of this half-admitted confusion/uncertainty, Mookyul rudely breaks into the students’ conversation by asking, “so, are all of you faggots?” (I normally wouldn’t use that word, but I believe he does in the comics, and you just can’t get much more rude than that, as an opening gambit.) Needless to say, Ewon’s friends are a bit taken aback; they want to like Mookyul because he’s with Ewon, but, well, he’s not very likeable, and they’re having trouble seeing what the attraction could be.
But what I realized is that all the previous times in which Mookyul abruptly says or does something so freaking arrogant, so unbelievably self-centered or overbearing or bellicose, that this specific incident may exist to re-cast those previous incidents in a new light: when Mookyul is out of his depth, and is intimidated, his first reaction is not just to strike out, but to do so in any way that will throw the other person/people far off their center, as well. He can find his own balance only by knocking others off theirs -- and honestly, that may be a childish, immature, insecure thing to do, but it’s also oh-so-very-human, and to some degree, therefore a sympathetic character flaw. For the first time, I didn’t see this arrogant seme-protag as pushing buttons and laughing when offense is taken, but as someone so insecure about his own value/intelligence/ability that he’s actually somewhat pitiful. He just doesn’t have a clue.
It's especially telling that when Mookyul does end up getting in Ewon's friends' faces, trying to start a fight (with full knowledge that he could easily kick their asses and everyone else's without breaking a sweat), that he doesn't accuse them of looking down on him because he's uneducated, which might be a truth. Instead, he says, "I can tell what you rich little snots are thinking. But someone like me, who lives like a bum, wouldn't care." Except that he's the only one at the table (from what I understand) who's wearing tailored haute couture, who drove his own Mercedes to the bar, who has his own high-rise condo, who has a well-paying job. He calls himself a bum because it's the one detail that would not be true, and demonstrably so, and therefore is the one challenge that wouldn't actually bother him.
In the course of a first read, it seems like Mookyul's being his usual abrasive, let's-fight-now, belligerent angry self, but re-reading, the scene just gets bigger for me in terms of Mookyul's characterization in what's rather subtle, literary-wise. That is, there's so much fuss and noise associated with a high-emotion angry scene like the ones Mookyul produces without a second thought, that the underlying message is easily ignored. (And that's just one more reason I think the author rocks, for using it to sneak sympathetic characterization past without being heavy-handed on the below-surface dynamics.)
As the story continues apace, there does come a break in the pattern. They do argue, and Ewon holds his own but backs down, gives up, whatever -- it doesn’t come across as him being weak so much as insisting that he doesn’t care that much, so it’s not worth any more effort. Both Mookyul and Ewon refer, at different points, to the fact that Mookyul’s primed for Ewon to jet at the first opportunity, and although Ewon doesn’t seem to like Mookyul mentioning it, it’s not like he really disagrees. It’s the truth, after all. Ewon may be subservient in social situations, and protective of friends/weaker-types like his ex-lover Jiho, but at the core he’s a self-reliant, independent, downright self-isolated person, isolated in the sense of refusing to let anyone near, or in, on an emotional level. For Mookyul, whose understanding of relationships seems to be based more on a “I do this for you, and you therefore feel that for me, in return”, Ewon’s obstinant refusal to play the game has got to be baffling and exasperating. In one argument, Mookyul hollers at him, “You don’t want to date, you don’t want to live together, you don’t want to have sex, so what the hell do you wanna do when you’re with me!?”
If you put together that angry cry with the moment of intimidated surprise in the bar, and then follow along the story to the point where Ewon lays down the law, the subversive/reversal in Yoo’s characterizations becomes clear, and I get the absolute biggest joy out of it. (I think she should be required reading, possibly, for romance writers: how to create conflict in romance involving an alpha male who...turns out to not be.) Because when a final line is crossed and Ewon decides that’s his limit of what he’ll put up with, I can’t really say he “grows a backbone”. That would be denying what’s really a very strong personality in every scene prior, if a willfully-sequestered personality (and not even from willful ignorance so much, I think, as from a general disinclination to get involved, at all, because involvement equals emotional ties, and whatever it was in his past, he won’t tie himself down to anyone, seeing it as the biggest risk of all, a kind of self-oblivion). No, it’s more that the break-up scene gives Ewon a lengthier chance to display what previously has only shown up in slight flashes: when he decides to cut someone to the quick, he’s very perceptive about what exactly to say and do. Almost brutal, but with a great deal more finesse than Mookyul has ever possessed.
All too often, the active/pitcher/seme/dominant whatever protag-half of the romance equation is also seen as the powerful half. You can go the ridiculous route with this, like the stereotypes so rampant in Japanimanga, where the character that’s older and taller is automatically the dominant partner (and the few stories with “younger/shorter seme” are much rarer and a sort of against-the-grain fetish). The het version, of course, is the big strong muscled Fabio with the slender, petite woman who only comes up to his shoulder (or less, if you’re going for broke) and at some point he’ll carry her, heft her around, basically treat her -- at least on a physical level -- like she’s almost literally a small child compared to his height/weight/strength. Running concurrent with those stereotypes, of course, are the expected characteristics: the powerful partner, the dominant partner, is the one who’s rich, who can provide, and perhaps as a benefit to being the one who has-so-much, can be cranky and arrogant and pushy and controlling. (It’s always the submissive/powerless partner who does the keeling-in, the giving-way, the apologizing, even the rationalizing; but what else does the uke-protag have to offer than a pretty smile and some good sex? It’s like there’s this logic that says, “if I give you a porsche, then of course you’ll put up with my temper tantrums and abrupt coldness, because otherwise, no porsche!” Or something.)
I mention that because if I’ve not made it clear, through the first five volumes or so, Ewon has played the quintessential uke: he’s fussed at times, he’s every now and then shown flashes of independence, but the overwhelming material power, and physical power (including height) of Mookyul have kept Ewon squarely in the uke-protag position, at least from a just-reading-to-enjoy perspective. But seeing Ewon slice Mookyul to the gut, and doing it efficiently and thoroughly, makes a lot of the previous dynamic suddenly not so obvious. The most recent scene, Ewon’s discovered Mookyul’s infidelities, and despite Mookyul doing all but calling him a hypcrite outright (referencing the way they’d re-met, thanks to Jiho), Ewon retorts he at least apologized and didn’t screw around on Mookyul. All along, when Mookyul’s particularly angry, he threatens with his fist (or makes to threaten) and that’s been enough to get Ewon to back down (although Ewon warned him against going so far as to actually hit, because Ewon won’t take that). In this argument, Ewon is determined to strike back, and he’s much more efficient about it. He says he’s going to stay with a friend, and why should Mookyul get upset? They’ll mess around, and Ewon’ll come back once he’s gotten off. Mookyul is enraged (and from the looks of the illustrations, quite hurt), which is when Ewon levels him, saying, “Should I tell you I love you, before I go?”
I went back through the previous volumes, starting with the chapter when Ewon wants to know about the Chairman but is being oblique about it, and Mookyul thinks Ewon wants to hear those three little words. The short of it is that Mookyul implies it, saying “my beloved fox,” and the like, until finally saying it bluntly, “I love you, Ewon Jung.” From there on, it’s Mookyul who says it, and actually says it repeatedly. I didn’t realize until going back, that not once did Ewon ever repeat the words back to him. However, Ewon did buy a very expensive present for Mookyul’s birthday, which to Mookyul seems to have been the equivalent of a declaration of love, seeing how Mookyul reacted just as he would’ve if he’d heard the words. That right there probably says a lot to you, dear reader, about just what Mookyul thinks constitutes “being in love”. But still, at no point had Ewon said it, so pulling out that line as a final devastation is, well, pretty much a devastation. That’s what I meant by Ewon holding an awful lot in abeyance, and really only showing the blades when he’s quite ready to go for the kill. If Mookyul is the thunder, Ewon is most definitely the lightening, because Mookyul may knock you down but it’s Ewon who scorches without mercy.
Getting back to the classic romance sub/plot stereotypes and the issues of powerful vs powerlessness, I’m really delighted in reading this story that it actually took me this many chapters to stop and realize (although I admit it was tickling my head before, I put in the category of “wouldn’t it be nice if...” instead of being certain it was coming). Basically, Yoo has taken the premise and dynamic of the standard romance plot of arrogant seme-protag and materially-weak, physically-weaker, personality-subservient uke-protag, and underneath it created the backbone of a story in which all that was seme is uke and what appeared uke is revealed as seme.
Some of the folks exchanging comments about this most recent chapter over on the Totally Captivated forum (and I highly recommend reading their comments as well for some insightful takes on the latest events) noted that Ewon really displayed a significant amount of maturity in handling the argument/break-up, far more than Mookyul, and that it was necessary, story-wise, for Ewon to finally lay down the law. (There's a fair number that aren't feeling too forgiving about Mookyul's less-than-truthful take on the situation, though, so if you have a soft spot for belligerent, privately-educated, noisy overgrown grade-schoolers, consider yourself warned!)
But I think Mookyul’s physical reaction in the course of the break-up scene was very telling, as well -- which first was a punch, but curiously enough when Ewon went for the kill, verbally, Mookyul's reaction wasn't to punch, but to slap -- which if you think about it, has some slightly different connotations. We tend to punch people when we want to hurt them, to knock them down; it seems to be instinct (in a wide number of cultures, from what I’ve seen) to slap when you’re offended/hurt. If you think about it, a slap isn’t as physically powerful as a punch requires, and most of the time you see a slap in literature or media, it’s a woman doing it. It’s most often an open-handed move, it doesn’t require the speed or precision of using fist and muscle, and the simple force of the swing can be enough to snap a person’s head to the side even when they’re taller and stronger than you. (My own theory is that somewhere in there is buried meanings that come from the simple physical act: when you punch someone, you’re shoving them back, it’s a “get away” kind of move. When you slap someone, it’s almost always across the face or cheek, with the palm carrying just a bit to the mouth: the meaning, then, isn’t “get away” but “shut up, stop saying that”. To me, whether or not the author sat down and critically considered the differences on a conscious level isn’t an issue; both were illustrated so there was some thought into drawing a punch versus drawing the gesture of a slap... and somewhere in there, perhaps, the author realized that Mookyul does not want Ewon to go away, to back off, but he does want Ewon to shut up, to be quiet, to stop saying those harsh things.
It’s often said that violence is the last refuge of the weak, which is why I think it’s especially important in this break-up scene that Mookyul does resort to violence, because he is the weak one in the relationship. He has taken the upper hand in deciding where and when and how Ewon goes to class and gets to the office, it’s his apartment, he gives Ewon a car, he provides a roof and a job and an income, and he decides when they’ll have sex (right up to and including some seriously borderline-noncon sex) and is always top when they do, and for all intents and purposes he’s been the dominant partner in everything. Except that, for all that, he is actually the powerless half of the partnership. Ewon, simply by dint of being able to walk away, is the one who really holds the power -- and I think the big reveal in that final scene is not that Ewon realizes he’s able to walk away: it’s that he realizes he doesn’t want to walk away... and has to, anyway, for the sake of his own principles. Casting back over the previous chapters, I think Mookyul has always been aware to some degree that he’s the powerless one of the two of them, that he’s given repeatedly (as best he can, as he understands ‘love’ and ‘giving’, however stunted) and yet he’s never truly gotten that final step into Ewon the way he feels he’s let Ewon into himself.
Two chapters covers this final evening and break-up, and that’s all it takes for Yoo to take the stereotypical seme-uke dynamic and rip it apart to show that underneath, the seme wasn’t really a seme. He’s the powerless*, perhaps even emotionally helpless but certainly emotionally immature and insecure, half of the dynamic, and all his theatrics and arrogance and rules laid down on Ewon have been nothing more than a lot of sound and fury to cover up that basic insecurity and uncertainty. Ewon, in contrast, has been uncertain about the danger of falling for Mookyul, and he may get annoyed, exasperated, sometimes just amused-exasperated, but he’s not truly been off his center at any point that I can recall. Then again, Ewon also has an iron-strong will when it comes to achieving his goals without anyone’s interference, without having to rely on anyone and without taking the risks of being hurt or let down. To realize that Mookyul has let him down, and that he gave a damn about it, shocks him to his core... but it doesn’t stop him from walking out that door, and it’s his ability to do so that doesn’t just reveal his maturity in declaring, and enforcing, a limit, but also his power in the relationship that he can, and does.
*ETA: I should probably clarify that I don't mean that Mookyul is weak in the personality/character sense; he's simply the powerless half of the relationship, and only as regards Ewon. Taking the relationship objectively, for all Mookyul's tyrannical demands, he's also the one giving everything, from roof to income to gifts to attention to words. With the exception of his birthday gift, there's not really anything else Ewon has given him in return, and in some ways Mookyul's sheer joy and surprise at the gift is almost heart-breaking, that he's willing to accept so little and put out so much effort to catch Ewon, keep Ewon, not let him go even when he knows Ewon's looking for a reason, a chance, to bolt. That's what I mean by powerless, within the relationship: Mookyul may control a lot of the trappings of their lives, but he isn't, ultimately, in control of the relationship's end anymore than he was genuinely in control of its beginning. For all his efforts to appear otherwise, the truth is that the relationship exists on Ewon's sufferance, not Mookyul's. That's what I mean by 'powerless'.
I’ve more to add, about the stereotypical dominant-protag’s arrogance and “I buy you things so you love me” kind of logic, and Yoo’s use of what is really an abusive situation (for Mookyul) that further explains and clarifies (and adds to the sympathetic element of) Mookyul’s understanding of relationships... but I’ll do that in the next post, or in the next day or so. Need to go put down the last bit of cork on the kitchen floor, and then to clean up the glue, seal the ends, and soon, we will have kitchen floor. Woot.
This is ostensibly a discussion/critique of Totally Captivated, a Korean manhwa that’s up to its 5th volume (and will therefore contain spoilers through volume 5, chapter 35), but first I’m going to explain the attitude/observations I’ve had that cause my reaction to TC itself. Mostly, I guess, to place it in context as a romance sub/plot, even if (technically) it stands outside the Japanimanga traditions of uke/seme (in M/M relationships) as well as separate from the western AlphaMale romance stereotypes. It’s still squarely within romance, regardless of cultural base, and I think to some degree our interpretations of, tastes for, preferences about, the fine lines we tread in romance aren’t cultural so much as just part of being human. But I’ll get to TC itself, in a bit. First...
It’s hard to avoid the romantic sub/plot breed (in any genre, it seems) of the Alpha Male (or, in the japanimanga subculture, the ‘seme’; in M/M, the ‘pitcher’). Most writers -- okay, there are a few exceptions but I’ve figured out who they are and I avoid them now -- but most writers are aware that relationships of any sort have a handful of basic stages. There’s the introduction stage, which is usually somewhat platonic in most general-genre stories all the way up to lurve!lust!omg! at first sight if the genre-mix leans heavily towards a strong romantic element. Then there’s the dancing stage, dunno what else to call it, when both characters are starting to get the idea that they’re attracted and/or feeling emotions, but do the back-and-forth as a result of self-doubt, past history, current events keeping-them-apart, whatever. In stories where ‘romance’ is one of the major genre labels, the third step of the get-together is often where the story ends (barring any sequels). Every now and then a writer has the guts, or a good-enough plotline, to carry past the HEA and into the after-the-after, where reality intrudes, there’s conflicts, things aren’t so perfect. Or maybe it’s just that the world is once again in danger of being snuffed out and our intrepid pair must deal with it, etc etc, usually with some parallel emotional in-relationship conflict thrown in.
Concerning this back-and-forth tension-building aspect in romantic subplots -- I think writers know that for any readers hooked on the emotional context (as opposed to action or plot or theme, whatever), that the romantic/sexual tension is a big page-turner. That means there’s got to be some reason these two characters don’t fall straight into HEA, even if they did fall straight into the sack; even in stories where there’s no sack involved, there’s still an emotional connection that has to be denied, deflected, whatever, during this second stage. Gotcha.
The problem? Sometimes it seems as though some writers aren’t willing, or able, to bring themselves to create a protagonist with issues strong enough to genuinely cause avoidance/deflection: like in stories where the sack appears in the first chapter, lust!, omg!, passion!, etc, the writer works so hard at creating a conflation between ‘psychological intimacy’ and ‘sexual intimacy’ that when the protagonist balks, it’s really not believable. “I don’t want to be vulnerable,” the character says, but it’s pretty ridiculous because the author’s already made it clear that the character was pretty much all-types-of-intimacy already if only by virtue of the authorial insistence on making sexual/emotional the same.
Yeah, so people do balk after being a bit too open or honest but a) we don’t, especially sexually aware/experienced humans, automatically confer emotional intimacy as part-and-parcel of sexual intimacy (fuckbuddies, anyone?), and b) when we do leap into intimacy and then backpedal like mad, we’re often aware that we look like idiots in doing so. (And if we aren’t, I’d hope we all have friends close enough to say, “you’re acting like some twit-brained teeny cheerleader, dude, you slept with the guy, he likes you, you like him, freaking shut up and get over whatever your hang-up is.”)
So. Something must prevent the two interests from being permanently interested. Fair enough. This is where the ‘seme/semi’ issue comes in, for me: a writer who can’t/won’t create a character willing to be a bad guy in his own right ends up having to dump all the bad-guy (that is, “bad in the sense of preventing the HEA”) aspects onto the other character... and that other is invariably the Alpha/Seme. Instead of a protag who says, “I’m genuinely not certain this is a good idea for reasons A, B, or C,” (however rational or not) -- which is, at heart, a situation where the brakes are being applied by the reader’s main POV character and, this is important to note, in a story where the romantic plot is pushing a lot of the general plot and therefore the (average) reader’s page-turning interest is in getting to that HEA... are you following that?
If the reader is pushing towards the HEA, to have a POV protag who moves away from the HEA is to have a protag who may not be sympathetic to readers -- at least, not sympathetic in the hands of a less mature/less skillful writer. (Usually the result, then, is the reader wanting to bonk the protag over the head for being moronically obstinate for no particular reason other than diffused insecurity or, uh, just general stupidity, much like a good friend’s reaction. Our friends are often less sympathetic to our fears because we cannot fully communicate the depths, history, reasons and so on; the difference in fiction is that a good writer should be able to communicate these such that we don’t throw the protag, or the book, against the wall in frustration and exasperation.)
Given that what seems like a lot of writers out there aren’t always willing to push their POV-protag into being a genuine, independent obstacle for the final HEA-point, this means the love-interest has to do it. That’s where you get stuff like the alt-protag being all controlling but coming off as just abusive, or running hot and cold, or treating the pov-protag like crap (even if later we’re told “s/he acts that way because s/he cares, y’know, and is, uh, just kinda stunted about it”). It’s where the alt-protag treads the dangerous ground of non-con, as if s/he (I write s/he to be fair, but most often the alpha/seme is male, older, and quite often taller/bigger/more muscled to boot, more on that in a bit) can just mindread the pov-protag-uke and know that this kind of sexual intimacy (or any intimacy) is exactly what the pov-protag is just dying for.
Get into the fantasy stream of romance-blends, and that’s where you find the seme-protag with extrapowerful sense of smell -- “I can tell you’re turned on, you smell like it!” or acute senses or literal mind-reading or whatever. To me, that remains borderline, if not outright, non-consensual, because most experienced at least somewhat self-aware adults are cognizant that being sexually turned on does not predicate being willing to be intimate. This forceful “I know what you really want” also requires we ignore that one may be intimate on a physical level but retain the right to keep emotional or psychological intimacy out of the equation -- it removes the pov-protag’s ability/power to stave off the HEA via refusing to take that final, emotional step into complete oblivion, err, conubial bliss.
(The exception and/or free-pass is to those pov-protags who are sexually, socially, or emotionally ‘virgins’ in the sense of not having the experience to understand this distinction, but for all that, I can’t think of any stories with strong romantic sub/plots in which such inexperienced pov-protags figure out the hard way that being naked together does not immediately lead to joy-peace-happiness in all things relationship-wise. Then again, most romance sub/plots are kinda setting their foundation on this entire conflation, so I guess they’re not likely to wreck it by pointing out the major flaw, hunh.)
Anyway. Story after story, the pov-protag means well, falls for the alt-protag, maybe even recognizes the sensations of luuuurve way earlier, may make a slight show of being skittish but one kiss and a bit of that amazing! hawt! nookie and the pov-protag is just putty in the alt-protag’s stern, cold, controlling, overprotective, overbearing, what-have-you hands -- with the caveat that in many (less-skillfully written) stories of this breed, the alt-protag’s badness is author-designed purely for the sake of causing the pov-protag to be happy, sad, emo, happy, sad, emo, etc and thereby creating the illusion of a chemistry-laden dance. Which means that when things do, by whatever further author-designed tricks, move into the HEA stage, the pov-protag isn’t just a manipulated, inexperienced, naive twit who got jerked around for a hundred-plus pages, s/he is also a manipulated, rationalizing, self-deceptive moron who uses the alt-protag’s earlier abuse/inconsistency as twisted expressions of love.
What’s lying underneath that, however, is a simple critique that if you try to rewrite the story from the seme-protag’s POV, it just doesn’t hold up. The motivation isn’t complex (”I liked you and didn’t know how to show it”), or the reasoning is weak (”I was mean because I saw you talking to some guy who wasn’t me”), or just plain nonsensical (”I’m just like that”).
(I’m waiting for the day when some strong pov/uke/fem-protag replies, well, you see that door about to slam you in the face? I’m just like that. Get lost.)
Alright, granted, I can allow that a lot of these types of the romance sub/plot are really just wish-fulfillment, a sort of allowing oneself to become a neutral, non-powerful party: it creates an excuse. “I can’t help it, s/he seduced me, I was powerless to stop it,” except in this case it’s powerless to prevent falling in love (that being considered the same as ‘getting nekkid’). Where the pov-protag never actually does anything, if you stop and really look at these storylines; the pov-protag is too busy jumping when the seme-protag says jump, and then plummeting into rejection based on such inconsistent evidence/behavior, and probably (depending on the rating/audience) launched into sexual/ecstasy at just one touch/glance/word from the seme-protag, even if the pov-protag started the scene insistent s/he would stand strong.
(If you ever have a chance, read the opening act of Richard III, yes, the one by Shakespeare. It’s when Richard finishes his famous soliloquy -- “now is the winter of our discontent” -- and turns to find Anne approaching, leading the procession for her father’s body. A father, not-so-coincidentally, that Richard -- according to Shakespeare’s sources -- was supposed to have killed. Unh-hunh. When the scene begins, she’s spitting nails at Richard, with what appears to be quite righteous indignation. By the end of the scene? He’s not just proposed... she’s accepted. Say what? The scene is absolutely, completely, totally devoid of character logic, and it’s possibly one of the hardest scenes in all of Shakespeare’s plays not because it’s traumatic or pivotal but because it makes No. Freaking. Sense. Read it, and you’ll see what seems to be 90% of the Alpha-Seme breed of romance sub/plots from the uke/protag pov, wrapped up into a few hundred lines. “Asshole, asshole, oh, maybe you’re not so bad, oh, you did that because you love me, oh, that makes it all right, so now I love you, too...” Bolt the HEA to this point, and send that puppy out, the story’s done. Egawdz.)
About the pov-protag being “helpless” or “powerless” against the seme-protag... one sleeper sort of romance that pairs an easy-going seme-protag (who is also, somewhat unconventionally, the pov character) with an extremely headstrong uke-alt-protag who adamantly refuses to allow/display the vulnerability required to admit he likes or wants to be with anyone, in any way (combined with a very strong self-reliant personality). Early on, the seme-protag realizes that their (so far only platonic) friendship is one of the few the uke-protag values; the seme-protag threatens to leave, and goes so far as to define his actions as blackmail. That is, if the uke-protag doesn’t want to lose this rare friendship, the uke-protag must also give in and be sexually intimate, as well.
It’s a strange action, since it posits the pov character as a bad-guy, to the degree that he knows he’s being manipulative... but down the road a bit, the pov-protag explains that he did so because he knew the uke-protag required an excuse. That it would be totally out of character for the alt-protag to confess he has feelings (of love, or sexual), and that the only way the alt-protag will accept closing the distance is if he can rationalize it to himself as something out of his control, as something he doesn’t have a choice in, because the alternative would be worse. Very few stories I’ve read have seme-protags that bluntly honest (and in some ways, believeable on a human level) about a motivation for manipulating another, let alone for effectively provoking/causing or in this case, setting it up for the uke-protag to allow himself the self-delusion/illusion of being powerless.
I mention that because that story taught me that such can be done, that we can see a manipulative pov-protag as sympathetic, though I think in some ways this is partly because the pov-protag is fully aware from the get-go that his actions may, down the line, destroy the very relationship he’s trying to blackmail/coax the uke-protag into. At some point -- and he reminds himself of this a number of times -- the uke-protag is probably going to hit a limit and decide it’s time to stop lying to himself about his concession of power, stop rationalizing, and walk away; I think it’s the seme-protag’s inner battle between “if this is all I’ll ever get, then I guess I’ll take this as better than nothing” versus “is this really the best for/what’s wanted by the one I love? if I truly loved, would I do this?” It’s risky, possibly abusive, and yet both sympathetic and believeable.
Plus, for me, it also tells me as a reader that this seme-protag has a pretty good handle on the alt-protag’s personality: but then, is such perceptivity to be used as means to manipulate another, or is understanding someone on that level just a step along the way to the HEA? If someone knows you well enough, has you figured out, well enough to manipulate you, does this mean they’re working against you, or are they working for you towards a common goal that suits you both? I like the gray areas. Excuse me. Ahem. Carrying on.
Okay, about Totally Captivated. The official teaser says:
The mafia threatens Ewon into working for a loan shark, where he’s forced to run dangerous errands for no pay. The culprit who doomed Ewon to this life is none other than Jiho, Ewon’s jealous ex who still burns at Ewon’s infidelity. Their gang leader Mookyul, with movie-star good looks and the bizarre, drunken habit of biting people on the neck, takes a keen interest in his attractive new errand boy. Will Ewon be able to survive the violent underworld (not to mention the constant sexual harassment) he must endure as an underling of Mookyul?When the story opens, we find Ewon working at a “credit union” which seems to be Korean for “bunch of mafia-based loan sharks.” Ewon had previously cheated (numerous times, it turns out, and he’s upfront about that and that his curiosity just gets him into trouble, whoops) on Jiho, and when -- after getting the cold shoulder from Jiho after the most recent infidelity -- Jiho and Mookyul run into Ewon, Mookyul beats the hell out of Ewon as retaliation for stalking Jiho. (The story makes clear later that Mookyul is no slouch when it comes to fighting, and in fact is considered one of the most fearsome fighters in his turf-area.)
Jiho suggests that Ewon work for Mookyul -- and Jiho’s motivation is both clear and believable, in that he’s dating a filthy-rich-movie-star-handsome guy and wants Ewon to burn up in jealousy; Ewon accepts/agrees to work the job (with no pay, at that!) purely because he doesn’t want to get on the bad side of the mafia and he sure as hell doesn’t want to get the crap beaten out of him again. Okay, so far, everyone’s motivation and behavior makes sense.
It also makes sense that Ewon -- who is a player to some degree, but he’s not what I’d call a malicious player, someone who just wants to rack up the notches on the bedpost. It’s more like he’s just... well, lonely, but also unwilling to make a connection with those people who are around him. Time and again he’s shown turning down his best friend’s proposals, on the pretense that he’s not a catcher and won’t be the bottom to his friend’s equally-strong preference for topping. The exchange is repeated often enough, here and there, that I started to suspect Ewon’s excuses weren’t a genuine disinclination so much as a good-enough excuse for keeping one more person at arm’s length. His willingness/interest in playing around seems more tied to recognizing a need for human affection but that one-night-stands are the easiest way to get that without emotional strings attached (although when he first narrates this about himself, he describes it just as a bad case of incessant curiosity).
After various trials (and some hysterical ones at that) while Ewon’s working as the office’s janitor-errand-boy-cook, Mookyul gradually becomes more and more fascinated by Ewon, for two reasons. The first is that he can’t stop thinking he knows Ewon from somewhere, but he’s not sure where, exactly. The second is that Ewon walks the edge of blatant attraction to Mookyul -- he’s well aware of Mookyul’s good looks, even if he’s not so sure about Mookyul’s personality -- yet he refuses to act on it. Much of that is because Jiho’s around, and while Ewon recognizes he doesn’t have strong feelings for Jiho anymore, he still doesn’t want to see that look of hurt on Jiho’s face. He might not be in love, but he does care.
It turns out, eventually, that Mookyul and Ewon met as children in a rather disastrous send-up that resulted in Mookyul quitting school (after beating Ewon up, for the first time, heh) -- and Mookyul declares that Ewon ‘owes’ him. For the emotional trauma Mookyul felt, for being the impetus that caused Mookyul to head out into the snow on his sixth-grade lonesome, for the fact that Ewon remembers little of the incident? Whatever it is, Mookyul’s price is sex, and Ewon reluctantly agrees...
Here’s where I think I first realized that Hajin Yoo, the author, isn’t your average meet-love-happy seme/uke stereotyper. When Mookyul thinks he’s gotten Ewon to agree to sex (despite the fact that Mookyul and Jiho are currently an item), he’s pleased with himself, and ready to go -- and in fact, it appears he’s even set up the conflict to force someone’s hand, be that Ewon’s or Jiho’s. (It’s not really clear.) Ewon, though -- despite internal thoughts that recognize he is attracted to Mookyul on a base/sexual level -- treats the situation with a partly-resigned, partly-exasperated, “well, fine, let’s get this over with.” I say Yoo isn’t the usual calibre of author because not once does she conflate sexual with emotional: Ewon may be sexually interested, but emotionally he’s pretty much not-there. For him, it’s a physical act, and an enjoyable one, but it doesn’t carry the emotional context that it seems to be carrying for Mookyul. His only stipulation is that Jiho should never know, and that seems only because he doesn’t want to hurt Jiho yet again.
Naturally (because the world deserves conflict), Jiho walks in on them. Short version is that Mookyul offers to dump Jiho, Ewon gets pissed that Mookyul would just throw away someone, Mookyul makes it clear he doesn’t care one way or another, and the story ends up with Jiho later telling Mookyul that he didn’t actually care about Mookyul, that his entire purpose was to make Ewon jealous. Mookyul, naturally, feels offended and used; Ewon’s reaction is to try and talk Jiho into apologizing, taking it back.
But no, Jiho knows the truth and he’s got to get closure, and then move along -- but before he does, he tells Ewon that he could put up with Ewon’s infidelity for only so long before he just couldn’t take it anymore. Jiho says, “Why do you hold out your hand, but run away every time I try to catch it? Haven’t you ever met someone you truly cared for? Don’t tell me you never met that one person you couldn’t do without...” it’s only later, in his own place and thinking back, that Ewon admits he can’t. Because what could be more frightening, he asks himself, than risking everything on one person?
A few other details about Ewon: he’s 22, like Mookyul and Jiho, and a senior in college (a fellow classmate of Jiho’s in the economics department). He’s on scholarship; he mentions having held down 5 different part-time jobs at once to pay for his schooling. He’s able to work for Mookyul’s office for free only because of scholarship money tiding him over, but when that runs out, he’s facing the question of how to extricate himself from the mafia and be able to pay rent and tuition. Although in the flashback childhood segment, Ewon recalls telling Mookyul -- an orphan -- that he’s also an orphan, he qualifies this by admitting internally that he wasn’t... but as far as he was concerned, he might as well have been (or something to that extent).
Somewhere, too, back in Ewon’s past, something happened, and this is possibly one of the only times I can really complain about the official translation. In the official version, Ewon tells Mookyul, “I can’t really remember much of when we met, thanks to that near-death incident you gave me” (I guess talking about the beating Mookyul gave him as a kid). In the scanlation version, however, the line goes more like, “I can’t really remember much about my childhood, after a near-death incident I had.” The first version may make sense in light of Ewon’s comments that Mookyul did beat the crap out of him, but there’s another point farther down (after realizing how they first met) in which Mookyul demands that Ewon repeat what he’d said when they’d parted as kids, as Mookyul was leaving the school grounds. (Ewon had followed him, yelling, “come back, you’ve got to come back, I’ll be waiting for you, right here!”)
Ewon asks himself, what was Mookyul talking about? And then there’s a single frame of what looks like a kid’s arm in a winter jacket, stretched out, palm up. There are speech bubbles around it, saying, “is that a kid in there?” and “is he alive?” ... and that’s the extent of the teaser we get about what may’ve happened. Ewon doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t ruminate on it, doesn’t even bring it up; he seems determined to live on his own two feet and he don’t need nobody, thanks, he’ll manage his own way, somehow. He certainly doesn’t wallow in self-pity.
What makes Ewon’s characterization so delicious, as a reader, is that he’s as much a study in contrasts as any full-fleshed literary creation, and a lot of that has to do with the author carefully creating a dichotomy between what Ewon does/says to others, versus what he keeps to himself. When I loaned the first three volumes to a Korean friend to read, she commented that Ewon would never make it in Korean society; he’s too stupid. I’m not sure “stupid” is the right word for it; I wouldn’t even say he’s naive. I think it’s more a matter of being willfully ignorant, a kind of simple refusal to acknowledge certain things and thus reduce their impact, somehow.
For instance, when one of the mafia-guys is being extorted by a “girlfriend” to pay off her debts, the guy asks Ewon -- who now handles the general accounting & petty cash for the office -- to get the several thousand dollars out of the accounts, and he’ll pay it back in a week, before Mookyul finds out. Ewon knows the guy’s being taken, and while he won’t steal/take the money himself, he compromises by turning over the accounting temporarily to the mafia-guy, who had done it prior to Ewon’s arrival. It’s not that Ewon falls for the girl’s pity-story, or has any illusions about the money, but he’s just not willing to get involved to the point of saying anything. He’ll give way, because it’s easier -- just as he gives way to Mookyul after being harrassed and pestered by Mookyul over and over. Fine, fine, here, have what you want.
Which brings up one of the other rare times I think the scanlation got it better than the official: after the Jiho/Mookyul breakup, Ewon quits the office. When the guys ask Mookyul why Ewon won’t be around anymore, in the official version, one of them says something like, “his sweet personality was growing on me.” In the scanlation, the line is, “he and his subservient personality were starting to grow on me.” There’s a big difference there, and looking over Ewon’s interactions with Mookyul and the crew, he does come across as very subservient. He cleans, he cooks, he rarely takes a stand on anything, preferring to just slip back and give way, letting the obstacle roll over him. If you take all that at face-value, then sure, it seems as though the one break in Ewon’s stereotype is that he’s insistent he’s a natural-born pitcher with no interest in being a catcher/uke -- a definite break considering how submissive he comes across in nearly every interaction, including with Jiho (who is far more emotionally forceful and/or straightforward than Ewon).
The turning point is that Jiho/Mookyul breakup, followed by Ewon and Jiho having a final goodbye, in the rain. Ewon comes down with the flu & doesn't show up again for work; meanwhile Mookyul’s crew are getting on his case having discovered that despite his generosity to them, he’d never paid Ewon a penny. All this time Mookyul’s been fascinated by Ewon’s apparent contradictions, but it’s his own men who really throw the final switch for him, when he realizes that Ewon’s become a bit of an office mascot for them. (They make a point of turning off the TV and telling their own boss to keep it down & not interrupt when Ewon announces he’s got to study for a test!) Mookyul can't let it go. I'm not sure whether he's unwiling to let Ewon's departure with Jiho, post-breakup-scene, to be left as the last word, or whether he just can't get Ewon out of his head, or if he's truly infatuated and refuses to accept that Ewon's left -- whatever the reasons for his display of disgruntlement, he still forces his men to show him where Ewon lives, and thereby discovers Ewon out sick with bad fever.
The next thing Ewon knows, he wakes up in Mookyul’s expensive high-rise apartment -- and his own tiny deep-in-the-slums lease has been closed, his stuff’s moved out, and he’s now living with Mookyul... and as far as Mookyul’s concerned, having “saved” Ewon from that danger known as the common cold, Ewon has to live with him. Ewon, of course, sees no reason why this would logically follow, demanding of Mookyul, “who do you think you are, to tell me what to do? you’re not my family or my lover,” to which Mookyul explains that’s exactly what he’s suggesting, that they become lovers.
Up to this point, Mookyul’s characterization can be summed up like so: imperious, arrogant, overbearing, belligerent, demanding. But like Ewon’s secret side, it’s only from asides and throwaway comments that Mookyul’s generosity and utmost loyalty is revealed. For the mafia-guy who steals the money (while doing the books), Mookyul says he knew full well the guy was stealing even when he was doing the accounting regularly, but Mookyul looked the other way because he knew of the mafia-guy’s ill mother. Mookyul doesn’t think twice about handing a large sum of cash to a former employee, to help him get a new start back in his hometown with his wife and infant child. And his own employees make noises about his generosity towards them, as well (which makes Mookyul’s stinginess towards Ewon especially glaring).
Mookyul never returned to school after quitting on that winter’s day, but at some point not long after that, he attempted to pick a man’s pocket, and that man turned out to be the credit union’s CEO, Chairman Lee... who not only caught him in the act, but offered him a place to stay, as well. It’s through the Chairman’s efforts that Mookyul did eventually get a highschool education, with private tutors. He does demonstrate some aptitude with computers and business, as befits the adopted son of a credit union’s CEO, but otherwise his formal education (especially the socialization aspect) is severely lacking. Ewon’s friend, Dohoon, calls Mookyul “an oversized grade-schooler,” and Ewon has to admit that the description is pretty accurate: emotionally, Mookyul remains pretty immature, though he wears a disinterested, arrogant expression in public.
For the most part, through to about the third volume, the sexual chemistry -- or perhaps just plain curiosity on each character’s part -- has stayed somewhat consistent, but in terms of their dynamic, it’s pretty much Mookyul running roughshod over Ewon, who swings between running like hell and giving a resigned shrug and saying, “fine, if that’s what you want, get it over with” (with unvoiced but likely internal plans for running afterwards, then). If you ignored a lot of the tiniest tells, here and there, you’d probably think the storyline is going to follow the usual seme-protag being the bad-guy obstacle (in this case, by just plain being so all-out unsufferable and arrogant that he’s just unbearable and in turn forces the uke-protag to flee); that is, until a few details when Mookyul joins Ewon and his classmates for a few beers.
After some tense moments during the introduction -- during which Mookyul is his usual imperious, in-your-face, abrasive personality -- the group settles down and Mookyul (who really has nothing to contribute) sits there and watches. He realizes, privately, that Ewon’s having a great deal of fun with his friends: “Is this what ‘normal’ people my age do?” He has no idea. His confusion/uncertainty is compounded by the news that Ewon isn’t just a good student, he’s the top-ranked student in his department, with straight-A’s. For someone who managed a high school education only through private tutors, the news seems to shock Mookyul and probably intimidate him (even if he doesn’t call it that, in so many words).
Now, here’s where Yoo got it right that other writers get it wrong (or don’t even get it): most of the time, we don’t really get any insight into Mookyul’s thought processes, or we only get the barest sarcastic remarks. But right on the tail of this half-admitted confusion/uncertainty, Mookyul rudely breaks into the students’ conversation by asking, “so, are all of you faggots?” (I normally wouldn’t use that word, but I believe he does in the comics, and you just can’t get much more rude than that, as an opening gambit.) Needless to say, Ewon’s friends are a bit taken aback; they want to like Mookyul because he’s with Ewon, but, well, he’s not very likeable, and they’re having trouble seeing what the attraction could be.
But what I realized is that all the previous times in which Mookyul abruptly says or does something so freaking arrogant, so unbelievably self-centered or overbearing or bellicose, that this specific incident may exist to re-cast those previous incidents in a new light: when Mookyul is out of his depth, and is intimidated, his first reaction is not just to strike out, but to do so in any way that will throw the other person/people far off their center, as well. He can find his own balance only by knocking others off theirs -- and honestly, that may be a childish, immature, insecure thing to do, but it’s also oh-so-very-human, and to some degree, therefore a sympathetic character flaw. For the first time, I didn’t see this arrogant seme-protag as pushing buttons and laughing when offense is taken, but as someone so insecure about his own value/intelligence/ability that he’s actually somewhat pitiful. He just doesn’t have a clue.
It's especially telling that when Mookyul does end up getting in Ewon's friends' faces, trying to start a fight (with full knowledge that he could easily kick their asses and everyone else's without breaking a sweat), that he doesn't accuse them of looking down on him because he's uneducated, which might be a truth. Instead, he says, "I can tell what you rich little snots are thinking. But someone like me, who lives like a bum, wouldn't care." Except that he's the only one at the table (from what I understand) who's wearing tailored haute couture, who drove his own Mercedes to the bar, who has his own high-rise condo, who has a well-paying job. He calls himself a bum because it's the one detail that would not be true, and demonstrably so, and therefore is the one challenge that wouldn't actually bother him.
In the course of a first read, it seems like Mookyul's being his usual abrasive, let's-fight-now, belligerent angry self, but re-reading, the scene just gets bigger for me in terms of Mookyul's characterization in what's rather subtle, literary-wise. That is, there's so much fuss and noise associated with a high-emotion angry scene like the ones Mookyul produces without a second thought, that the underlying message is easily ignored. (And that's just one more reason I think the author rocks, for using it to sneak sympathetic characterization past without being heavy-handed on the below-surface dynamics.)
As the story continues apace, there does come a break in the pattern. They do argue, and Ewon holds his own but backs down, gives up, whatever -- it doesn’t come across as him being weak so much as insisting that he doesn’t care that much, so it’s not worth any more effort. Both Mookyul and Ewon refer, at different points, to the fact that Mookyul’s primed for Ewon to jet at the first opportunity, and although Ewon doesn’t seem to like Mookyul mentioning it, it’s not like he really disagrees. It’s the truth, after all. Ewon may be subservient in social situations, and protective of friends/weaker-types like his ex-lover Jiho, but at the core he’s a self-reliant, independent, downright self-isolated person, isolated in the sense of refusing to let anyone near, or in, on an emotional level. For Mookyul, whose understanding of relationships seems to be based more on a “I do this for you, and you therefore feel that for me, in return”, Ewon’s obstinant refusal to play the game has got to be baffling and exasperating. In one argument, Mookyul hollers at him, “You don’t want to date, you don’t want to live together, you don’t want to have sex, so what the hell do you wanna do when you’re with me!?”
If you put together that angry cry with the moment of intimidated surprise in the bar, and then follow along the story to the point where Ewon lays down the law, the subversive/reversal in Yoo’s characterizations becomes clear, and I get the absolute biggest joy out of it. (I think she should be required reading, possibly, for romance writers: how to create conflict in romance involving an alpha male who...turns out to not be.) Because when a final line is crossed and Ewon decides that’s his limit of what he’ll put up with, I can’t really say he “grows a backbone”. That would be denying what’s really a very strong personality in every scene prior, if a willfully-sequestered personality (and not even from willful ignorance so much, I think, as from a general disinclination to get involved, at all, because involvement equals emotional ties, and whatever it was in his past, he won’t tie himself down to anyone, seeing it as the biggest risk of all, a kind of self-oblivion). No, it’s more that the break-up scene gives Ewon a lengthier chance to display what previously has only shown up in slight flashes: when he decides to cut someone to the quick, he’s very perceptive about what exactly to say and do. Almost brutal, but with a great deal more finesse than Mookyul has ever possessed.
All too often, the active/pitcher/seme/dominant whatever protag-half of the romance equation is also seen as the powerful half. You can go the ridiculous route with this, like the stereotypes so rampant in Japanimanga, where the character that’s older and taller is automatically the dominant partner (and the few stories with “younger/shorter seme” are much rarer and a sort of against-the-grain fetish). The het version, of course, is the big strong muscled Fabio with the slender, petite woman who only comes up to his shoulder (or less, if you’re going for broke) and at some point he’ll carry her, heft her around, basically treat her -- at least on a physical level -- like she’s almost literally a small child compared to his height/weight/strength. Running concurrent with those stereotypes, of course, are the expected characteristics: the powerful partner, the dominant partner, is the one who’s rich, who can provide, and perhaps as a benefit to being the one who has-so-much, can be cranky and arrogant and pushy and controlling. (It’s always the submissive/powerless partner who does the keeling-in, the giving-way, the apologizing, even the rationalizing; but what else does the uke-protag have to offer than a pretty smile and some good sex? It’s like there’s this logic that says, “if I give you a porsche, then of course you’ll put up with my temper tantrums and abrupt coldness, because otherwise, no porsche!” Or something.)
I mention that because if I’ve not made it clear, through the first five volumes or so, Ewon has played the quintessential uke: he’s fussed at times, he’s every now and then shown flashes of independence, but the overwhelming material power, and physical power (including height) of Mookyul have kept Ewon squarely in the uke-protag position, at least from a just-reading-to-enjoy perspective. But seeing Ewon slice Mookyul to the gut, and doing it efficiently and thoroughly, makes a lot of the previous dynamic suddenly not so obvious. The most recent scene, Ewon’s discovered Mookyul’s infidelities, and despite Mookyul doing all but calling him a hypcrite outright (referencing the way they’d re-met, thanks to Jiho), Ewon retorts he at least apologized and didn’t screw around on Mookyul. All along, when Mookyul’s particularly angry, he threatens with his fist (or makes to threaten) and that’s been enough to get Ewon to back down (although Ewon warned him against going so far as to actually hit, because Ewon won’t take that). In this argument, Ewon is determined to strike back, and he’s much more efficient about it. He says he’s going to stay with a friend, and why should Mookyul get upset? They’ll mess around, and Ewon’ll come back once he’s gotten off. Mookyul is enraged (and from the looks of the illustrations, quite hurt), which is when Ewon levels him, saying, “Should I tell you I love you, before I go?”
I went back through the previous volumes, starting with the chapter when Ewon wants to know about the Chairman but is being oblique about it, and Mookyul thinks Ewon wants to hear those three little words. The short of it is that Mookyul implies it, saying “my beloved fox,” and the like, until finally saying it bluntly, “I love you, Ewon Jung.” From there on, it’s Mookyul who says it, and actually says it repeatedly. I didn’t realize until going back, that not once did Ewon ever repeat the words back to him. However, Ewon did buy a very expensive present for Mookyul’s birthday, which to Mookyul seems to have been the equivalent of a declaration of love, seeing how Mookyul reacted just as he would’ve if he’d heard the words. That right there probably says a lot to you, dear reader, about just what Mookyul thinks constitutes “being in love”. But still, at no point had Ewon said it, so pulling out that line as a final devastation is, well, pretty much a devastation. That’s what I meant by Ewon holding an awful lot in abeyance, and really only showing the blades when he’s quite ready to go for the kill. If Mookyul is the thunder, Ewon is most definitely the lightening, because Mookyul may knock you down but it’s Ewon who scorches without mercy.
Getting back to the classic romance sub/plot stereotypes and the issues of powerful vs powerlessness, I’m really delighted in reading this story that it actually took me this many chapters to stop and realize (although I admit it was tickling my head before, I put in the category of “wouldn’t it be nice if...” instead of being certain it was coming). Basically, Yoo has taken the premise and dynamic of the standard romance plot of arrogant seme-protag and materially-weak, physically-weaker, personality-subservient uke-protag, and underneath it created the backbone of a story in which all that was seme is uke and what appeared uke is revealed as seme.
Some of the folks exchanging comments about this most recent chapter over on the Totally Captivated forum (and I highly recommend reading their comments as well for some insightful takes on the latest events) noted that Ewon really displayed a significant amount of maturity in handling the argument/break-up, far more than Mookyul, and that it was necessary, story-wise, for Ewon to finally lay down the law. (There's a fair number that aren't feeling too forgiving about Mookyul's less-than-truthful take on the situation, though, so if you have a soft spot for belligerent, privately-educated, noisy overgrown grade-schoolers, consider yourself warned!)
But I think Mookyul’s physical reaction in the course of the break-up scene was very telling, as well -- which first was a punch, but curiously enough when Ewon went for the kill, verbally, Mookyul's reaction wasn't to punch, but to slap -- which if you think about it, has some slightly different connotations. We tend to punch people when we want to hurt them, to knock them down; it seems to be instinct (in a wide number of cultures, from what I’ve seen) to slap when you’re offended/hurt. If you think about it, a slap isn’t as physically powerful as a punch requires, and most of the time you see a slap in literature or media, it’s a woman doing it. It’s most often an open-handed move, it doesn’t require the speed or precision of using fist and muscle, and the simple force of the swing can be enough to snap a person’s head to the side even when they’re taller and stronger than you. (My own theory is that somewhere in there is buried meanings that come from the simple physical act: when you punch someone, you’re shoving them back, it’s a “get away” kind of move. When you slap someone, it’s almost always across the face or cheek, with the palm carrying just a bit to the mouth: the meaning, then, isn’t “get away” but “shut up, stop saying that”. To me, whether or not the author sat down and critically considered the differences on a conscious level isn’t an issue; both were illustrated so there was some thought into drawing a punch versus drawing the gesture of a slap... and somewhere in there, perhaps, the author realized that Mookyul does not want Ewon to go away, to back off, but he does want Ewon to shut up, to be quiet, to stop saying those harsh things.
It’s often said that violence is the last refuge of the weak, which is why I think it’s especially important in this break-up scene that Mookyul does resort to violence, because he is the weak one in the relationship. He has taken the upper hand in deciding where and when and how Ewon goes to class and gets to the office, it’s his apartment, he gives Ewon a car, he provides a roof and a job and an income, and he decides when they’ll have sex (right up to and including some seriously borderline-noncon sex) and is always top when they do, and for all intents and purposes he’s been the dominant partner in everything. Except that, for all that, he is actually the powerless half of the partnership. Ewon, simply by dint of being able to walk away, is the one who really holds the power -- and I think the big reveal in that final scene is not that Ewon realizes he’s able to walk away: it’s that he realizes he doesn’t want to walk away... and has to, anyway, for the sake of his own principles. Casting back over the previous chapters, I think Mookyul has always been aware to some degree that he’s the powerless one of the two of them, that he’s given repeatedly (as best he can, as he understands ‘love’ and ‘giving’, however stunted) and yet he’s never truly gotten that final step into Ewon the way he feels he’s let Ewon into himself.
Two chapters covers this final evening and break-up, and that’s all it takes for Yoo to take the stereotypical seme-uke dynamic and rip it apart to show that underneath, the seme wasn’t really a seme. He’s the powerless*, perhaps even emotionally helpless but certainly emotionally immature and insecure, half of the dynamic, and all his theatrics and arrogance and rules laid down on Ewon have been nothing more than a lot of sound and fury to cover up that basic insecurity and uncertainty. Ewon, in contrast, has been uncertain about the danger of falling for Mookyul, and he may get annoyed, exasperated, sometimes just amused-exasperated, but he’s not truly been off his center at any point that I can recall. Then again, Ewon also has an iron-strong will when it comes to achieving his goals without anyone’s interference, without having to rely on anyone and without taking the risks of being hurt or let down. To realize that Mookyul has let him down, and that he gave a damn about it, shocks him to his core... but it doesn’t stop him from walking out that door, and it’s his ability to do so that doesn’t just reveal his maturity in declaring, and enforcing, a limit, but also his power in the relationship that he can, and does.
*ETA: I should probably clarify that I don't mean that Mookyul is weak in the personality/character sense; he's simply the powerless half of the relationship, and only as regards Ewon. Taking the relationship objectively, for all Mookyul's tyrannical demands, he's also the one giving everything, from roof to income to gifts to attention to words. With the exception of his birthday gift, there's not really anything else Ewon has given him in return, and in some ways Mookyul's sheer joy and surprise at the gift is almost heart-breaking, that he's willing to accept so little and put out so much effort to catch Ewon, keep Ewon, not let him go even when he knows Ewon's looking for a reason, a chance, to bolt. That's what I mean by powerless, within the relationship: Mookyul may control a lot of the trappings of their lives, but he isn't, ultimately, in control of the relationship's end anymore than he was genuinely in control of its beginning. For all his efforts to appear otherwise, the truth is that the relationship exists on Ewon's sufferance, not Mookyul's. That's what I mean by 'powerless'.
I’ve more to add, about the stereotypical dominant-protag’s arrogance and “I buy you things so you love me” kind of logic, and Yoo’s use of what is really an abusive situation (for Mookyul) that further explains and clarifies (and adds to the sympathetic element of) Mookyul’s understanding of relationships... but I’ll do that in the next post, or in the next day or so. Need to go put down the last bit of cork on the kitchen floor, and then to clean up the glue, seal the ends, and soon, we will have kitchen floor. Woot.