>>28772992/2
Now, admittedly not every protagonist needs to have a utilitarian plot purpose, they can have internal journeys. But ffs, at the very least the author has to make them say or think something interesting. Past ch.30, the vast majority of Ian's internal monologues is some variation on "Does Mr Raymond love me"," My heart aches for Mr Raymond", "Why isn't Mr Raymond back yet?", "I want Mr Raymond to choose me!!", "I can't confess my feelings to Mr Raymond..." etc., usually followed by a side character berating Ian on what an evil bastard his sugar daddy is (and that's all they do), but to no avail, because Ian's heart wants blah blah blah.
As a consequence by ch.57 I had largely turned against Ian as a character. Sure Raymond is virtually a bastard, but at least he DID something to progress the story in contrast to Ian who had completely abandoned almost every desire or want (including painting) save for wanting to be in a relationship with the ml. And yes, this was portrayed as a bad thing, but Ian doesn't ever take an active step to do anything about it. He just mopes and pines himself into a sickbed for 10+ chapters until the plot intervenes and scoops him out of his misery, depriving him of even making a choice and any narrative agency altogether. He just heals himself offscreen.
So while Ian did end up rebuking his abusers early on, later chapters do walk back his character growth somewhat as he remains a largely passive, ineffectual, and indecisive protagonist.
This might be standard for most manhwa, hell, most romance protagonists, but we live in a post-Mo Dao Zu Shi, post- Can Ci Pin world. You just can't get away with writing a BL where one of the partners does all the heavy lifting and the other just remains boring and irrelevant.
There are other problems, but that's the main one I had with this series. What does the anon who recommended it think? Anything resonates or am I being full of shit?
