Discover Top Posts Tagged with #niyama

06/50: love me at my most cringe ("punch drunk love," "my dearest patrolman," "happy crappy life")

In manga, love is often said to be a game, and the first one to fall, or at least to admit to falling, is "the loser." But what exactly being the loser in a game of love means only manifests in unhappy scenarios: the winner doesn't need to invest, can use the loser's feelings for their own advantage, is not hurt by endings, can remain aloof and pursue their own life. If you intend to write a story about two people happily and peacefully coexisting with each other in a relationship, these are useless.

In happy love stories, then, where two people carry on in just such bliss, love is not a game. Love is patient, love is kind, and above all, love is honest. The winner is in fact the character who first declares, "I'm in love with you." Being true to your own feelings is a weapon, disarming and potent. It puts the recipient of your feelings on the backfoot. Instead of having the upper hand, they are forced to respond to you, and because this is a happy love story, that response is to return your feelings.

At this point in the essay you are probably expecting me to devolve into heartfelt sentiment. I have asserted in previous weeks that boys' love is about the transformative power of love, after all. But this week I read three stories that take this theme and push it even further in an unexpected direction. Love may be patient, may be kind, but above all love is cringe. It is not only undesirable to be cool, but to be cool is to be false to yourself, and thus an impediment to achieving love. To be cringe is to be free, and true love is being loved at your most cringe, when you are freely being yourself.

Seonwoo, the main character of "Punch Drunk Love," is honest and direct to a fault. Though he presents outwardly as a mousey accountant, he is the most domineering character in the series—it's just that all that dictatorial energy is directed towards living exactly the life he wants. Since childhood he has always done exactly what he wanted to do and worn exactly the clothes he liked, and he is not about to start changing now, unless it's in service of getting dick from the object of his love and overwhelming lust, Jeong Taemoon.

As in so many Korean webtoons, one character's rich family (in this case, Taemoon's) becomes the plot device and main villain. But all the money and chaebol power in the world is no match for Seonwoo. Years of living like a slut in his fantasy sheets and an offputtingly dweeby virgin in the streets have given him the strongest mental of any character I've ever met in a bl romcom. Like a koala who will eat only eucalyptus leaves despite the fact the literal toxins in them prevent proper consumption, Seonwoo is sustained by a rich inner life only he can maintain, and he will only accept the parts of reality that add positively to it. It doesn't matter that the sadistic bdsm dungeon master sex god version of Jeong Taemoon only exists in his head and is a fantasy that embarrasses the hell out of the real Taemoon every time it comes out; it doesn't matter that his clothing choices are so disastrous they misled Taemoon into thinking Seonwoo was being abused by his family; it doesn't matter that no one in his office likes him and he might get sent to a rural office just so people can stop interacting with his (very correct) ideas about accounting. Seonwoo is who he is, and he lives that life proudly.

So where does that leave Taemoon? In the face of such unwavering devotion to cringe, he (and eventually his father) must admit defeat. He learns to give up the cool facade he puts up at work. He learns to see the world Seonwoo's way. He learns to be cringe, to be vulnerable, to ask for what he wants—which is love, of course. It is always love. Clothes in "Punch Drunk Love" are an outward manifestation of the bravery in being cringe, so of course when Taemoon is finally filmed confessing his devotion to Seonwoo (with the help of Seonwoo's sister), it is in an extremely cringe outfit consisting entirely of Seonwoo's tasteless clothes. By the end of the series, he regularly submits himself to wearing the flashy clothing Seonwoo picks for him. By borrowing the power of Seonwoo's cringe, Taemoon is at his best.

In "My Dearest Patrolman," cringe manifests in the realities of being in love with a man who is the human embodiment of a dad joke, despite having only a child of the cat variety. Seiji is almost 40 and made prematurely old by his profession, where he routinely deals with young kids and old men. Shin, no spring chicken himself at 30, is kept young by his relationship to Seiji. He is forever the delinquent high schooler smoking outside a convenience store, and Seiji is forever the cheerful uncle who went out of his way to get to know that young kid.

The dasai oyaji is, of course, a common type, and the pairing of the sloppy old man who is reluctantly, then enthusiastically, soulbonded to his young, uptight partner is why "Tiger and Bunny" remains an undying favorite among fujoshi. The charm of "My Dearest Policeman" is the way Seiji's character leans into the trope and doesn't give in to the temptation to make Seiji cool. There is no scene where, say, Seiji suddenly shaves and transforms into a handsome dashing zaddy in a suit or displays competency that makes him the object of a minor female character's affections, to Shin's dismay. Seiji remains, through all three volumes, a little out of shape with a belly threatening to sprout a spare tire. He scratches his butt, picks his ears and nose, and has to get a colorectal exam (he is at the age where prostate health is important). But Niyama never pushes it too far—he's never unloveable or disgusting, just so down to earth and realistic that you feel all 39 years of his age with him.

Where sex in "Punch Drunk Love" is still the stuff of fantasy, like when there is an unexpected callback to a fantasy involving Taemoon squirting (!!) while in Seonwoo (!!!), sex in "My Dearest Patrolman" is funny and tender and realistic. There are no acrobatic sex positions on the stairs, no attempt at being the domineering seme or seductive uke, no roleplaying or putting on sexy baby voices. Seiji and Shin jokingly complain about laundry while rubbing against each other, compare each other's bodies to daifuku buns, are kept from another round by hunger pangs. There's a surprising amount of explicit scenes in "My Dearest Patrolman," but the overall vibe is hardly sexy. The word I'd use instead is "domestic." The sex scenes feel individual, personal to who Seiji and Shin are, with interactions that are sexy to them and them only. If they embarrass the reader, it is of no consequence to Seiji and Shin, who enthusiastically get it on regardless. During one sex scene in volume one, Seiji makes a joke about "mommy's milk" that would have absolutely withered my erection if I were Shin—but it does nothing to deter Shin, who immediately starts to jerk Seiji off. Cringe is truly in the eye of the beholder, and for Shin and Seiji, there is nothing about the other that isn't loveable.

In the company of "Punch Drunk Love" and "My Dearest Patrolman," "Happy Crappy Life" may seem like an outlier. As of volume three, its characters are not exactly in a relationship one would describe as blissful married coexistence. Kasuya and Kuzuya are dancing around a relationship (despite Harada putting them through raising a tentacle monster, playing sudden death rock-paper-scissors over who gets the honor of getting plowed, and fighting over a pen shaped like a skewer of dango for, ahem, Reasons), and it is very much the kind of story that believes the first to fall in love is the loser. The only saving grace will be that Kasuya and Kuzuya have both fallen for each other, and fittingly, they are both the loser.

But if there is one thing Kasuya and Kuzuya represent, it is living loud and proud with your dick out. They like what they like, and what they like happens to be getting fucked. If commitment is usually about sharing burdens and being there for each other through sickness and through health, Kasuya and Kuzuya's commitment is to something weirder but no less serious: two fuck buddies who will always be there for each other('s anal play) no matter how shameful or ridiculous their desires.

"Punch Drunk Love" is about learning to love your partner's cringe. "My Dearest Patrolman" is about loving in the face of everyone else's cringe. "Happy Crappy Life," of course, is the most extreme: love that is only possible because of cringe. When Kasuya's ex-girlfriend Tsubasa comes to visit, she validates what we've all been suspecting, that the Kasuya she knew was cooler, smarter, more mature. If either Kasuya or Kuzuya could date someone else, they could probably become more responsible and respectable people. They'd leave behind this common law marriage of sexual convenience, where they spend their lives happily preoccupied with playground level antics, only with dildos involved. But Tsubasa, like everyone in the series with the exception of Kasuya and Kuzuya themselves, sees that the real Kasuya can only come out when he is with Kuzuya. The Kasuya she knew couldn't truly let his freak flag fly. The truth is that they find in each other, and only in each other, the freedom to be their true cringey selves.

And, well, that too is love!

Punch Drunk Love is available on Lezhin. My Dearest Policeman is available from SuBLime. Happy Crappy Life is available from Kuma.