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10/50: be sweet to me (reck/yeongha, "hate mate")

It's another week where I come to you not with a rec but with a meditation on (what else?) love and, specifically, the conundrum of being loved by a yearner.

There was a tweet going around that was like, "everyone person in bl fandom has that one bl that is their brand and reminds everyone of them." Well, I have always been a contrarian and all my friends who have known me for a long time in fannish spaces have accused me of hating love and/or happiness. But if you asked, they could all name the one dynamic that gets me every time: the not quite love triangle where character A and B are in a relationship that is actually about A or B's feelings for character C. This is why I am always game for a story where a man who has been in hopeless unrequited love for a long time suddenly finds himself being pursued by a stranger, or when a main character, who is in a relationship, is forced to confront an ex with whom he still has unresolved feelings.

So in a way, "Hate Mate" was written specifically to target me.

(This post will have spoilers for the entirety of Hate Mate.)

Bang Subin has been in love with his best friend Nam Hyeonwoo since high school. Buoyed by a night of drinking and Hyeonwoo's return from his two-year military stint, Subin manages to finally talk Hyeonwoo into sleeping with him, only for Hyeonwoo the next morning to deny anything ever happened and reveal that he has had a long-time crush on Subin's boss, a beautiful older woman named Yeona. Increasingly uncomfortable in the apartment he shares with Hyeonwoo and sick of seeing Hyeonwoo try to woo Yeona (who wants nothing to do with dating a young man), Subin turns to Kang Jun, an older salaryman Subin met on a gay dating site. Though put off by Subin's immaturity and the fact that Subin is obviously using Jun to get over Hyeonwoo, Jun finds himself first trapped and then reluctantly drawn into caring for Subin. Hyeonwoo, meanwhile, is forced by Yeona's repeated rejections to confront his own feelings for Subin, eventually coming to the realization that he does wants to be with him. Too little too late, however, as Subin has decided to close the book on his long-time crush on Hyeonwoo for a new relationship with Jun. Though they are not quite happily ever after, they move in together, and Hyeonwoo leaves Korea for a music career in Los Angeles so that he never has to see Subin and Jun together again.

Never, that is, until two years later when Hyeonwoo comes back to Seoul for "Hate Mate" season two.

You know I am hard on first loves and first men and generally find any story of "we met when we were younger and now we are destined to be together" to be, by default, suspect. But what is there to love about Nam Hyeonwoo? We consider him a love interest at first because Subin loves him and envies his talent and allows Hyeonwoo to make him miserable. We consider him a love interest later in S1 and throughout S2 because he tells us he loves Subin. But his actions are that he ignores Subin for years, repeatedly rejects Subin's feelings, lies to him about a drunken sexual encounter, interferes in Subin's life despite claiming to be in love with another person (woman), and then goes back to ghosting Subin for two-year periods. The one moment of kindness he shows (going to pick up Subin with an umbrella on a rainy day) is derailed by him ditching Subin for Yeona. The depths of Hyeonwoo's feelings are entirely in his head to which we, the readers, are given full access, but no one else.

The problem with Nam Hyeonwoo is the problem with any story that stars the yearning man as a love interest. Yearning is not, by itself, love. Yearning is the twin of limerence, the destructive sibling of self-soothing, an outpouring of emotion within ourselves, for ourselves. It is, in some ways, a delusion that happens entirely in our heads. It is not a relationship we have with the other person. The other person is simply an object.

Yearners survive in art because they write poems and draw portraits, because they model plays and novels on their affections, because they leave behind letters and journals. This is, of course, why Hyeonwoo is a musician and why "Hate Mate" S2 features music he has made about his feelings for Subin. But this is yet another way in which the object perfects the yearner's life, as opposed to a way for the yearner to engage the object. High school Subin was very important to Hyeonwoo, in fact maybe the only thing that mattered to Hyeonwoo after his parents died. But what does that matter now to 23-year-old Subin, or 28-year-old Subin? What can Hyeonwoo offer for Subin, instead of merely at him? Can love be judged just on depth of emotion? Is love just who cares the most in their head?

If all we craved was to see one man say in words that they love another man, then bl as a genre would be enough. So why, then, do we keep turning to shounen manga and insisting there are deep, loving m/m relationships hidden in plain sight? I think it's because male characters in shounen manga are always doing things to or for or at another male character, and that feels like love. If they yearn, they cannot do so purely emotionally, because it is a genre that by and large rejects pure emotion between men. So instead, they become better rivals or students or mentors or partners; they grapple with each other physically; they fist bump or strangle or punch or high five each other; they connect.

Subin has loved Hyeonwoo for years too, but he is a different kind of desperate bl man: the orbiter of unrequited love, who does anything he can to keep himself close to the object of his affection. So he learns to cook for Hyeonwoo, he takes care of Hyeonwoo when he is sick, he learns guitar and works at Hyeonwoo's old workplace to remain close to Hyeonwoo's passions, he tests Hyeonwoo's affections over and over again even though he knows where he falls on the list. Is it any surprise, then, that Subin ends up with Jun, whose biggest fault was simply committing to a half-hearted affection too quickly?

Which is to say, there could have been no other ending for "Hate Mate" except Subin choosing Jun. Jun's view of love is punishingly rational, practical, productive. In a relationship, he puts in effort, for which he is rewarded. He compares it to studying, where effort results in good grades; Subin compares his approach to cooking, which (usually) produces food. For Subin, who spent seven years longing for a man who gave him nothing, this is a revelation. Through his time with Jun, Subin is incontrovertibly changed, though he (and perhaps Reck and Yeongha) does not fully comprehend it. When Subin rejects Hyeonwoo in S2, he says, "I would fantasize about you being in love with me. I'd imagine you regretting the way you treated me and begging me to forgive you in anguish." But all that imagining, all that fantasizing, it is over now. All Hyeonwoo can offer Subin are reflections on their past together, and Subin at 28 becomes a person who values work and effort over feeling. Love or the absence of it does not live in only in his head. He makes curry for Hyeonwoo and tends to Hyeonwoo's body one last time. He cannot do that for Hyeonwoo again, because those actions are the vectors through which love moves, and vectors should be a two-way street.

I hope in saying all these things that I sound convincing. The reality is that I struggle with "Hate Mate" S2. Not because I think the ending is wrong—I believe, strongly, that Subin should not be with Hyeonwoo. But reading "Hate Mate" S2 feels like grading a math problem where the student got the right answer but they showed their work and you have no idea how they got there. "Hate Mate" S1 is a finely crafted story about Character A (Subin) getting into a relationship with Character B (Jun) because of his feelings for Character C (Hyeonwoo). Trust me, I am a connoisseur of such stories. But in trying to make "Hate Mate" S2 a story about Subin choosing Jun despite Hyeonwoo's feelings, Yeongha and Reck have made Hyeonwoo a pointless, bothersome presence, a bad stink that lingers and takes time and energy away from the actual issues that Subin and Jun are facing. What I wanted for Jun and Subin, I think, was something close to what Cocomi gave the main characters of "Send Them a Farewell Gift for the Lost Time," a "break-up then make-up" story focused on the characters parsing out what they need to fix in a relationship versus what they need to fix in themselves. How do you find your way back to love when it feels like all you have are the actions? How do you soothe another person's insecurities? What happens when you know each other's buttons too well, and push them because you mistake reaction for resolution?

Instead, with Hyeonwoo there, "Hate Mate" S2 becomes a proper three legged triangle, with Hyeonwoo and Jun's mutual hatred functioning as a force repulsing them back towards Subin. It's easy to get lost in the drama, declaring that you love your boyfriend because you fear he might get stolen away by his first love. That is the work of yearning, and yearning, we know, is not enough.

You can read "Hate Mate" on Tapas. Title is from "Be Sweet" by Japanese Breakfast which feels extremely Subin-coded.

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