I’ve been on that Webtoon grind and I wanna rant about one of my favorites currently
The Guy Upstairs - Rozy is a Fantastic Character and I Love Her
Note: as of writing this Episode 45 has just released, so spoiler warning for everything up to that point
One of my favorite parts of this story is the protagonist, Rozy. Her characterization at the beginning of the story makes her seem like the “normal” one. As in contrast to Hawa and of course, Adam, the reader is led to believe that Rozy is a normal person who just happened to witness a murder.
We get introduced to her as kind of a loner, but this only reinforces a cooler, more levelheaded and logical front that the reader initially sees Rozy as. She’s a kind of reflection of cool, calm, collected detectives you see in detective novels or shows.
However, we also see her as just a normal person, her relationship with Hawa and her banter with Ravi reinforces this. So we get two sides of Rozy, one that makes her relatable to the audience and one that makes her a compelling protagonist.
Her being relatable to the audience is what makes The Guy Upstairs a thriller, rather than a mystery. She’s put into a very terrifying situation, witnessing a murder, and knowing that the murderer lives so close to her. Rozy takes matters into her own hands by putting up security for herself, she’s prepared because she *knows* there is a clear and present threat to her.
but this changes so drastically when Hawa gets involved. Hawa is her own person, Rozy knows this but is also aware of how naive she can be. Rozy does whatever she can in order to protect Hawa, but Hawa’s trusting nature and Adam’s desire to mess with Rozy makes Hawa ultimately feel as if she can’t be honest with Rozy because of Rozy’s cautious behavior.
This begins a character shift in Rozy, at least to the audience. Rozy is slowly losing her control over everything happening. She can attempt to protect herself the best she can, but she can’t control Hawa’s actions. This is when we get to see one of Rozy’s major weaknesses and my favorite part about her.
Rozy *is* paranoid, she’s clearly very cautious for a reasons outside of the events with Adam. Rozy is paranoid about many things, from one event she draws seemingly logical conclusions on her own, and act accordingly to them. This works together with Rozy’s other flaw, her closed off nature.
In Rozy’s mind, her conclusion drawn from one event is a definite possibility. One that she has to plan for and go forward from there. But she doesn’t bring anyone along with her, she won’t because this is the truth she’s living in.
Due to her paranoia, she ends up isolating herself. The only person she reaches out to (Alex) for help is because she recognizes her limitations. It is because her series of events that she believes will happen are realistic in these limitations is what holds Rozy back from confiding in others.
This isolation and loneliness, with the one person she cares about so much at risk of being taken away, her fear of losing Hawa ultimately pushes Hawa away and what amplifies one of the scariest experiences when it comes to the mind.
Not knowing if you can trust yourself.
Rozy, a character whose actions have been dictated by her interpretation of events, can’t even be completely sure whether that event even happened. Rozy’s paranoia becomes detrimental to her in this phase. When you cannot trust yourself, it makes an infinite amount of possibilities that are “logical”. As someone as cautious as Rozy, assuming the worst is the safest option she can choose.
Rozy hears that Hawa hates people who see the worst in others and internalizes that as Hawa hating her, combined with the tense conversation they had previously as well as this comment being directed towards her, logically, it makes sense for Rozy to assume this. Rozy ended up losing Hawa because if everything went how she thought it would go, this would’ve never happened. But Hawa is her own person who is ignorant to the reality that Rozy sees.
Rozy has a choice to make, with Hawa becoming closer to Adam, it makes it all that much easier for Adam to kill Hawa. Rozy’s passive aggression towards Adam will not work because it only takes one night for Hawa to be gone. She either has to take matters into her own hands, trust herself and the events she witnessed, even when everyone around her tells her that this couldn’t have happened, when she has no evidence to suggest otherwise, when her situation that night was hazy, she realizes the amount of doubt she really has.
If she decides to doubt herself then she can’t trust anything anymore. She doesn’t trust other people, she can’t trust herself. In fact, if she’s wrong, she’s been the one who’s been a bad person. She alone was the one who ruined her relationship with Hawa and there’s no excuse she can hide behind. She’ll truly be broken as a person with no one to turn to, because within her own paranoid mind, she had already lost the one person who would listen.
And this is exactly the type of person that is perfect for Adam’s mind games. As he, himself, was potentially this kind of person.
I’ll elaborate on that if I ever decide to make a follow-up on this. I mostly focused on Rozy’s relationship with Hawa but her connection to other characters is also interesting and warrants a post in of itself!
This is all my interpretation of the story and characters, Rozy resonates with me a lot because I’m very experienced in gaslighting myself. I wanted to write out my thoughts and talk about stories that I think deserve more love!!
Anyway read My Deepest Secret and The Guy Upstairs if you haven’t already, both really wonderful and I may compare the protagonists of the two later on if I feel like it. I’m not opposed to talking about other webtoons either, this one’s characters just resonated with me in particular.
Headcanon Time (Minor Spoliers for Chapter 5 of XC3 [Not Story-Related Spoilers])
Gray and Rozana adopt Eunie after Gray’s ascension quest. Then, once Taion and Eunie get together, Rozana starts calling him her son-in-law, which confuses him at first [since he has no clue what that means] then makes him embarrassed every time she calls him that.
**Just had a lot of thoughts while doing the “Lovebirds” and “Payback for Treason” and wanted to put them out there
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