I started reading “The S-class that I raised” and… Guys. I really like Yoo Myeongwoo.
He’s someone with great talent. He was in a bad place when he met Yoojin, sure, and his life wasn’t great so far. But he was a gifted kid, and he had a lot of talent.
But Yoo Myeongwoo doesn’t see it himself. He is stuck in that gifted-kid burnout mindset of having to be successful and better than those around him to have worth. He’s a good guy, but he can’t see that for himself either.
What I like so much about him as a character, though, is how realistic he is. He isn’t healed just because Yoojin helped him get out of the swamp of bad luck he was stuck in. Even in an environment full of good people and chances, an environment where he is obviously happy, he still isn’t mentally stable. His mental instability gets brushed off as part of his character by Yoojin, but there’s also breakdowns. Backlashes. Moments where his head goes dark again, where Yoojin get worried he might harm himself, where his mind goes down that bad, bad road to self destruction or self sabotage or possibly even self harm (or worse) again - though we can’t be sure which path his thoughts take, since Yoojin doesn’t have a mind reading skill.
Either way: Even surrounded by good people, after being given a life full of opportunities, his head is quick to go back to the dark thought patterns it’s used to.
As representation for depressed people in literature, especially in a Korean novel, he is absolutely stunning. And I cannot tell you how much this character being written the way he is means to me.
