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juushikaI only IM with a few people, and only two on a daily basis, and one of them is Express. Express is the reason that my video game Tumblr exists: that I would put my video game liveblogs and gigantic essays there, instead of rapid firing them into his IM window.
So now I liveblog manga into his IM window.
I'm reading the manhwa Let Dai (find it here) and it is giving me a lot of feelings. Jaehee is an average, obedient high schooler until he spots a local gang targeting a classmate and is introduced to Dai, the head of the gang. Dai's intense beauty and psychopathic behavior fascinates Jaehee even as it revolts him, and the two are drawn inexorably together. I will write a review one day when I have finished it (I'm two thirds the way there now), but when I say I'm having a lot of feelings what I mean is OH GOD HOLD ME, MY HEART.
So in lieu of a proper post, I'll do that thing where I harvest my IM monologues and turn them into edited sentences.
I found Let Dai by searching for "twisted relationships manga" because I am super predictable. The site where I'm reading it posts two pages at a time, set at a default size I have to squint to read; magnifying it aggravates my repetitive stress issues: I am literally suffering to read this thing and it is worth it.
Hilariously—in a story which, while sexually inexplicit, is still about gangs and hormonal teenage boys and a psychopath—for the first couple volumes swearing is sometimes rendered as F$#@ing. Really. This is particularly hilarious when Dai shows up with FUCK written on his bandanna and then this becomes an actual thing which actually happens:
It sorta kills the immersion if you know what I mean. (Also the sound effects are ridiculous, especially early in.)
"It's raining crazy hard!," says Naru. "On a day like this, you should lie on your stomach, eat junk food, and read comic books 'til you pass out." Okay yes sounds like a plan I agree.
After the initial issues, Let Dai is nothing like City Hunter's levels of batshit interspersed with the awesome and the surprisingly complex. Instead, it mirrors my reactions to Northanger Abbey (honest to god). Jaehee's emotional landscape is vast, complex, and finely rendered; in Dai he desires and seeks an intense, vivid relationship, but like Northanger's Catherine, his desires are foolish—because they're too idealized to be realized (romantic gothic manors; all-consuming love), or because they're dangerous if realized (romantic gothic manors filled with murderers and/or ghosts; all-consuming love that literally threatens his body and livelihood). His attraction to Dai is not in spite of, but often a result of, the conflict between their romance and Dai's personality—his early responses to Dai are frankly masochistic, and as their relationship progresses, Jaehee tells Dai, "I sometimes feel ... our happiness and sadness are directly proportional to one another." And the text judges him, Jaehee judges himself, he fears his relationship with Dai so intensely that he becomes physically ill at the thought of it.
But the desire never wanes, in Jaehee or the text or the reader. There's a grudging admiration for that degree of emotional intensity and availability: what Jaehee wants may be toxic to him, but all of it—the desire and the aim—is also beautiful.
ALSO IT IS TRANSPARENTLY WRITTEN FOR ME.
After Dai leaves his gang, Jaehee and Dai develop a relationship which to an outsider looks like the sort of best friends who are so close it's almost weird but, you know, to each his own—until you find out they actually are doing it. They are intensely convincing both as young lovers and as best friends: they can be spinning "I love yous" in one moment and agreeing on CHOW TIME in true dork fashion the next, and that's not unusual for a relationship—many people turn their partners into best friends—but not only do the platonic elements read as thoroughly convincing Teenage Boy, they're foiled by a number of teenage boy relationships: the ex-girlfriend with whom I only ever held hands (P.S. am I gay?), the bromantic best friend, the development of a social circle. But Dai doesn't do friendship: prior to bonding with Jaehee he had never had one, so even at their most platonic there's a subtext of intimacy: not necessarily sexual intimacy—although the interplay between friend-bonding and sex-bonding is fantastic—but unusually intimate, given the people involved.
And Jaehee hits the checklist of high school problem topics: making friends, bullying, sexual violence, suicide, sexual awakening, non-normative sexuality, coming out... But it's not The Perks of Being a Wallflower, hot topic issues and a few emotional climaxes but a transparency, an emptiness—because Jaehee's emotional landscape is one of the most robust and vivid that I have ever seen. His fascination with Dai is not uninformed: his emotional intensity allows him to read and dissect Dai, breaking down the factors that create and perpetuate Dai's behavior; the same analysis makes him aware of the danger in his own attraction, and fatally alert to the relationship's fragility. His inner narratives are poetic and insightful, dense with melancholy but also with a self-aware burning hope that makes Let Dai a story of liberation and its consequences, and of the fact that in the moment of liberation the consequences can be damned.
It's teenage boys. They're growing and fertile and magical, they form these normal and exceedingly strange bonds, they explore their sexualities, they are foolishness and hormones, and I love them in a totally non-creepy way I swear. Jaehee checks off the teenage problem list not because he's a motivational story but because he's a teenage boy. He's a gay masochistic teenage boy in love with a gang leader, so it's not without ~drama~, but honestly? that makes for good reading and often only helps sell the premise of a teenager in love.
Of course in the IM window this is followed by:
LITERALLY PERFECT
AND THEN DAI STARTED CRYING AGAIN BECAUSE HE'S HORMONAL AND GRIEVING and his grandma died and he's in love and
BABIES
GROUP HUG
FEEEEELINGS
SO MANY FEELINGS
oh god I'm fitting favorite song lyrics to Let Dai
this manga is authentically getting to me
but so help me if Tegan and Sara's Take Me Anywhere isn't this relationship
But after that I write an essay.
This is just half of it—it can be a dark and intensely troubled story, I have so much to say about Jaehee that everyone else gets left behind, and the amount of CAPSLOCKING MY FEELINGS is frankly underrepresented. But the point is that I love it. Jaehee is one of the best protagonists I have ever had the pleasure to encounter, and almost unnervingly like me. It's ridiculous in the way that love is ridiculous yet still tears the heart out of you when you shouldn't even be able to give it away. It is what I look for when I look for relationships: intensity and complexity; the sort of realistic nuance that heightens but is not destroyed by the idealization. P.S. You should read it.
So now I liveblog manga into his IM window.
I'm reading the manhwa Let Dai (find it here) and it is giving me a lot of feelings. Jaehee is an average, obedient high schooler until he spots a local gang targeting a classmate and is introduced to Dai, the head of the gang. Dai's intense beauty and psychopathic behavior fascinates Jaehee even as it revolts him, and the two are drawn inexorably together. I will write a review one day when I have finished it (I'm two thirds the way there now), but when I say I'm having a lot of feelings what I mean is OH GOD HOLD ME, MY HEART.
So in lieu of a proper post, I'll do that thing where I harvest my IM monologues and turn them into edited sentences.
I found Let Dai by searching for "twisted relationships manga" because I am super predictable. The site where I'm reading it posts two pages at a time, set at a default size I have to squint to read; magnifying it aggravates my repetitive stress issues: I am literally suffering to read this thing and it is worth it.
Hilariously—in a story which, while sexually inexplicit, is still about gangs and hormonal teenage boys and a psychopath—for the first couple volumes swearing is sometimes rendered as F$#@ing. Really. This is particularly hilarious when Dai shows up with FUCK written on his bandanna and then this becomes an actual thing which actually happens:
It sorta kills the immersion if you know what I mean. (Also the sound effects are ridiculous, especially early in.)
"It's raining crazy hard!," says Naru. "On a day like this, you should lie on your stomach, eat junk food, and read comic books 'til you pass out." Okay yes sounds like a plan I agree.
After the initial issues, Let Dai is nothing like City Hunter's levels of batshit interspersed with the awesome and the surprisingly complex. Instead, it mirrors my reactions to Northanger Abbey (honest to god). Jaehee's emotional landscape is vast, complex, and finely rendered; in Dai he desires and seeks an intense, vivid relationship, but like Northanger's Catherine, his desires are foolish—because they're too idealized to be realized (romantic gothic manors; all-consuming love), or because they're dangerous if realized (romantic gothic manors filled with murderers and/or ghosts; all-consuming love that literally threatens his body and livelihood). His attraction to Dai is not in spite of, but often a result of, the conflict between their romance and Dai's personality—his early responses to Dai are frankly masochistic, and as their relationship progresses, Jaehee tells Dai, "I sometimes feel ... our happiness and sadness are directly proportional to one another." And the text judges him, Jaehee judges himself, he fears his relationship with Dai so intensely that he becomes physically ill at the thought of it.
But the desire never wanes, in Jaehee or the text or the reader. There's a grudging admiration for that degree of emotional intensity and availability: what Jaehee wants may be toxic to him, but all of it—the desire and the aim—is also beautiful.
"I had forgotten the crude violence that was always intertwined with Dai's sweet words. The terror of violence... The scheme of power within that violence... Under no circumstances should violence be glamorized or justified. Whether physical or spiritual, it leaves scars in the end..."
ALSO IT IS TRANSPARENTLY WRITTEN FOR ME.
Juushika: there's just something magical about
I'm sorry but
teenage boys
they're so...
everything I think of sounds bad
fertile!
Express: yep
that sounds bad alright
After Dai leaves his gang, Jaehee and Dai develop a relationship which to an outsider looks like the sort of best friends who are so close it's almost weird but, you know, to each his own—until you find out they actually are doing it. They are intensely convincing both as young lovers and as best friends: they can be spinning "I love yous" in one moment and agreeing on CHOW TIME in true dork fashion the next, and that's not unusual for a relationship—many people turn their partners into best friends—but not only do the platonic elements read as thoroughly convincing Teenage Boy, they're foiled by a number of teenage boy relationships: the ex-girlfriend with whom I only ever held hands (P.S. am I gay?), the bromantic best friend, the development of a social circle. But Dai doesn't do friendship: prior to bonding with Jaehee he had never had one, so even at their most platonic there's a subtext of intimacy: not necessarily sexual intimacy—although the interplay between friend-bonding and sex-bonding is fantastic—but unusually intimate, given the people involved.
And Jaehee hits the checklist of high school problem topics: making friends, bullying, sexual violence, suicide, sexual awakening, non-normative sexuality, coming out... But it's not The Perks of Being a Wallflower, hot topic issues and a few emotional climaxes but a transparency, an emptiness—because Jaehee's emotional landscape is one of the most robust and vivid that I have ever seen. His fascination with Dai is not uninformed: his emotional intensity allows him to read and dissect Dai, breaking down the factors that create and perpetuate Dai's behavior; the same analysis makes him aware of the danger in his own attraction, and fatally alert to the relationship's fragility. His inner narratives are poetic and insightful, dense with melancholy but also with a self-aware burning hope that makes Let Dai a story of liberation and its consequences, and of the fact that in the moment of liberation the consequences can be damned.
It's teenage boys. They're growing and fertile and magical, they form these normal and exceedingly strange bonds, they explore their sexualities, they are foolishness and hormones, and I love them in a totally non-creepy way I swear. Jaehee checks off the teenage problem list not because he's a motivational story but because he's a teenage boy. He's a gay masochistic teenage boy in love with a gang leader, so it's not without ~drama~, but honestly? that makes for good reading and often only helps sell the premise of a teenager in love.
Dai: What are you thinking about?
Jaehee: Why can't I get completely close to you?
Dai: It's okay, because I'm moving closer to you instead.
Of course in the IM window this is followed by:
LITERALLY PERFECT
AND THEN DAI STARTED CRYING AGAIN BECAUSE HE'S HORMONAL AND GRIEVING and his grandma died and he's in love and
BABIES
GROUP HUG
FEEEEELINGS
SO MANY FEELINGS
oh god I'm fitting favorite song lyrics to Let Dai
this manga is authentically getting to me
but so help me if Tegan and Sara's Take Me Anywhere isn't this relationship
But after that I write an essay.
"If someone loves you, they give you power over them."
This is just half of it—it can be a dark and intensely troubled story, I have so much to say about Jaehee that everyone else gets left behind, and the amount of CAPSLOCKING MY FEELINGS is frankly underrepresented. But the point is that I love it. Jaehee is one of the best protagonists I have ever had the pleasure to encounter, and almost unnervingly like me. It's ridiculous in the way that love is ridiculous yet still tears the heart out of you when you shouldn't even be able to give it away. It is what I look for when I look for relationships: intensity and complexity; the sort of realistic nuance that heightens but is not destroyed by the idealization. P.S. You should read it.
