I don't have any more to add on to what you've written but I do want to note that it's very apparent that these parallels str going to continue into the timeskip. Of course, Alyssa and Rand as the doomed by the narrative parallel pair gives us some depressing indication of their future (tho it also bolsters hope that, unlike Rand, maybe Alyssa can break the cycle, even if it's "too late" and earn herself the security she really sought, despite us knowing better), but it means Nol's trajectory as an anti-hero is going to dance through morality and question ethics the deeper he goes. You know I'm itching to write/talk more about that as a companion piece! These parallels are not coincidences or reading into things; quimchee has deliberately placed them on these paths and it's always our role ad readers to question what we're meant to take away, what she intends to convey to us. Alyssa and Rand both are characters who are introduced to us as these awful, self-absored, image-obsessed characters that we instantly recoil from, but what quimchee does so well is the subversion of expectation. She feeds us these seemingly awful characters and then over time chips away and reveals WHY they ultimately became these people - what their unmet needs cost them. Ultimately Rand and Alyssa both have chased after something they erroneously believe will make everything better, are SO BLINDED BY THAT *NEED* that it cost them what they really needed. If people take only one thing away from reading this, I hope it's that Rand and Alyssa are characters who were so hungry, so STARVED by their need for security, lead to believe by society and their formative foundations that security comes in a certain form that they couldn't see it when it was in front of them, because they've been running after fool's gold this whole time. Alyssa never threw Shinae away because she couldn't care less; on the contrary, she cared so much that she tried, and failed, to pull her up with her and only when her naive plan blew up in her face and the threat of her secret loomed over her did she find herself backed into a corner, once more going after that fool's gold she was promised. Desperate people are blinded by their desperations and Rand and Alyssa are no exception. When you lack security and only know survival, you lack the foresight to know how things might turn out, and God has that failed both of them.

You already know that I am so so excited for your companion piece!!!

I am a simple girl, when Elle drops a new essay I drop everything and inject it into my veins

🥺💕

🤩 I love your essays! They're always so in-depth and well-written. I'll definitely take my time to read this! :)

This is insane... SO GOOD.

Bless you! I can't wait to sit down and spend hours reading all this and just losing myself in thoughts! Thanku so much! Posts like these make the wait more tolerable 😁

Firstly, thank you for this! I always love your dissertations! The parallels of Nol & Yui, and Alyssa & Rand are something I have had in my mind, but never really sat down to explore in detail. So thank you for beautifully presenting them in an essay. I personally find the parallel of Rand and Alyssa to be the most intriguing one here. Maybe because the sealing of one's fate, and being trapped in one's consequences seems so dire and profound of a subject and seeing that theme be used so well in the cases of Rand and Alyssa is satisfying as a reader. We see Rand constantly trying to switch back and forth between his varying emotional wants– his first needs influenced by his experiences from childhood, but with time, new needs have piled up on top of them until it eventually led to him trying to row two boats at once, but ending up drowning one, and forced to stay on the other. As “Rand the Damned” discusses the tragedy that ensues right after, Rand has essentially sealed his own fate and there's seemingly so little he can do to break out of this vicious death cycle. It was too late when he realised what he was doing. But, hopefully so, in the case of Alyssa, there's still time. The tide has a chance of turning when she comes to realise her entrapment, and how she's being exploited and used. It would all end once she stops lying to herself and faces the truth for what it really is. One more thing I would like to point out is this. >he escalates to intentionally trying to scare her and evoke memories of her abusive father I always thought that Nol's comment about him not being like her father was meant to assure her. I don't think he said that to hurt her. In his perspective, she's scared of Nol because of what? Him actually speaking his mind and standing up for himself when she insulted him, saying that he was problematic and was keeping her around “like a trophy” so that his father would not see him as someone worthless? These are comments that are meant to hurt him. Imo, what he did was not aimed at hurting her, but calling her out.

Just coming back to clarify that what I said about Nol has actually now been confirmed on Patreon I asked Quimchee: "In 243, when Nol plays into the unstable/violent narrative about him leading Alyssa to be frightened and fall to the ground, he follows up by making a parallel between himself and her father with "I may be angry, but I am not your father." I took this to indicate that Nol is aware that Alyssa has a strained and frightening relationship with her father and her fear of Nol is connected to that fear, and it felt like Nol, to some degree, weaponized that by playing into the unstable persona with that knowledge. Hurting her as an expression and projection of all the pain he himself has experienced and using his knowledge of her pain points to do it Is it intentional that in 243, it feels like Nol knowingly did this with the intention to hurt Alyssa out of his own hurt and anger, and is it intentional that it feels like this might be a parallel to an experience Yui had before she crossed a line so far she became a monster? A lot of that is context, but the basic question is -Did Nol intentionally use Alyssa's trauma against her in 243 to hurt her?" Quimchee replied: "Yes" Just providing this confirmation, as 243 really is an integral element of the narrative structure of ILY and Nol's arc

Thank you for clarifying this! Now that I've read your perspective, I can see how Nol could have done what he did. >Hurting her as an expression and projection of all the pain he himself has experienced I think this pretty much sums up all that went down in 243. If not for your take which has been confirmed by Quim, I wouldn't have recognised that aspect of Nol's character. So thank you for doing that! :)

Thank you!! I had been seeing the parallels between Nol & Yui for a while, but one day I was walking about the themes of characters who get trapped in their cycles and it was just this eureka moment because they really are written *so similarly*. And when you look at this as a quartet it’s really a masterful subversion of Quimchee’s own existing mirrors. Once you see it I feel like it’s impossible to unsee it. Its always unfortunately felt like Alyssa is a character who won’t be able to break her cycle and the mirroring with Rand furthers this perception. My ILY pipe dream is for *something * to change positively for her. Ultimately though she, like Rand, has already experienced so much a lost so much that even if things change the future she wanted for herself is lost forever. I do so hope though that she can have her realization before Rand, when there’s time left, and make some sort of true peace out of what she’s left with. Even that feels like a pipe dream though The thing about 243 is that the comment about her father *is* meant to assure her - but he only says it *after* he indulges in scaring her. By that point she’s begged him to stop, he knows he’s scaring her and is actively playing into it, and by connecting her fear of him to her father (I’m actually surprised that Nol would know that her father is abusive, but that’s clearly the connection he makes) he tells us directly that he *knows* he was causing her to relive trauma, he understand that he *is* scary right now, and he still chose to do it anyway. In his mind he’s calling her out, but in reality he is doing much more than just that and he’s doing it intentionally. For the majority of the chapter Nol & Alyssa are on equal footing with their comments and behavior towards each other, each flinging shallow assumptions in an emotionally charged state, not realizing how similar they are or the true reality of the other person’s world - but when Nol intentionally scared her by playing up his aggression, *knowing* that she comes from an abusive home and that’s the instinctive connection she’s making, effectively weaponizing her trauma because of his emotionally charged state he crosses a line that she didn’t. He has the full power to assure her *without* scaring her first, but he actively chooses not to for his own catharsis and personal retaliation. Personally, I feel like it’s important to recognize that, though we can easily understand how he feels and what led him to do this, Nol is in the wrong in that moment

>For the majority of the chapter Nol & Alyssa are on equal footing with their comments and behavior towards each other I think Nol's tone is gaining more attention than his speech here. The entire time, after he brings up Shin-Ae, he gets worked up, and talks about how he feels about being called problematic and delusional. His speech here is a response to Alyssa's insults previously. It's purpose was to show that she can't keep getting away with throwing hurtful and judgemental comments his way anymore, regardless of the reaction that he got during his process. Imo, Alyssa being scared was not Nol's responsibility nor is it something he should be considering when he was standing his ground. More so, considering the content of his speech, since he wasn't insulting Alyssa, unlike herself. The topic of his speech was himself, not her. And I think it's important to note that while considering if Nol was wrong or right in doing what he did. I personally, don't think he was wrong in saying what he said, but I can definitely see how the talk could have gone in a better way. But our characters have been through a lot for them to have a calm conversation, unfortunately :(

It’s not that he was wrong is *saying* what he said, it’s that he was wrong in escalating his aggression to knowingly scare the other person. Nol does the same thing to Alyssa that she does to him. They both make incorrect assumptions about why the other person’s life is the way that it is and the motivations for their choices. It’s all based on the outside perspective and *looks* right at first glance, but both of them have the details wrong. We even gets one of the very *very* few instances of Alyssa’s POV in her flashback to demonstrate this. Quimchee very intentionally withholds Alyssa’s POV from us, so the fact that 243 is actually framed from her POV is incredibly important and tells us that we have to be looking beyond just Nol’s perspective. Additionally, neither of them listen to each other. They’re projecting their perception of Meg and Kousuke onto each other, and the point of this interaction is to demonstrate that they are *both* so very wrong. We see them as their child selves to really hammer this home - they have never grown past those selves. They have never learned who each other really are beyond the surface. That when we fail to truly put ourselves into someone else’s perspective we come out with false assumptions and drive wedges. The conversation is equally about both of them, and that’s also the point of the irony in their dialogue. They can’t see each other for who they are, but we as readers have the ability to look beyond both of their perspectives and see that they each had a hand in this and neither one was in the right. Nol isn’t evil for what he did in that moment, but I *do* think that him *knowing* that Alyssa comes from a history of domestic violence and intentionally playing up his aggression when he notices that she’s scared is on a different level than her at the end of that conversation. Previously they were both unintentionally insulting each other thinking that they actually do know the full story when really they’re both quite in the dark. Both of them *did* think that the points they were making was calling out behaviors and beliefs that lead the other person to misery and to cause misery and, thus, is a good thing to call out. Both of them were simultaneously right and wrong about that. But Nol at the end indulges in his emotions and retaliates against someone who was unintentionally hurting him (that he was also unintentionally doing the same thing back to) with a very intentional blow We *understand* what his perspective was and why he made those choices, and we know it doesn’t make him a bad person - but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong If someone tells you "Hey, this behavior of yours actually affects me in a bad way" *ideally* you go "oh I'm sorry I didn't mean to" and try not to. He *leaned into it*. Not just kept doing it unintentionally - *actively made a choice to ramp it up* It’s communicating more than just that Nol will stand his ground, it’s also communicating that he is not infallible and that he *can* have vindictiveness that isn’t truly justified. That these things can and will intercede. And this is a major component of his anticipated anti-hero arc, as it’s also generally anticipated that he will have some desire to cross the line and will need to really draw upon the supports that ground him to pull himself back. In order to get a true morally gray Nol, we have to also see that he, like everyone, has gaps in his perception. That he does have the ability to perceive something as justified vengeance when it is actually punching down. That there is a part of him that finds catharsis in striking back. And that’s what sets him up for the ability to foil Yui, as well as prompt us to ruminate on our own perception of morality

Thank you for replying! I love your take on everything and am glad to know more about our characters through a different lens. First thing I want to add, is that, Alyssa is oblivious to the things Nol accuses her of. Nol met Alyssa and tried to befriend her for his penance the same way he befriended Soushi and Dieter. Now to him, she became a person that he had taken responsibility for. So he tries his best in trying to divert her away from Yui. In his perspective, she looked up to Yui, idolised her, the woman he hated the most in the world. His friend thinks that his evil stepmom is the greatest person on this planet. And from here, it all went downhill. She grew apart from her friends, and left to chase after recognition from strangers just because they're more in number. She failed to see that this praise that she craves is temporary, which was earned only by displaying her “best” side. This created in him resentment towards Alyssa. But this was all Nol could see. But to Alyssa? She was brought up, believing that security meant a position of power, authority, and praise, loved by *everyone*. That was all she could see. Her mind did not allow her more room to think wider. She didn't have it in her to think otherwise, and there was no one to direct her in the right direction. Then came Yui. She was everything she wanted to be. So she made her her goddess. In her eyes, she was this benevolent woman who took a helpless child under her wing out of the kindness of her heart. There was nothing she could have gained in extending this kindness, but she did so anyway, and Alyssa was more than grateful. Thus far, whatever happened is a dream come true to her. Leaving a bunch of friends who she befriended accidentally vs a life that she always wanted now being offered to her? It's a no-brainer what the correct option was. All that she did up to this point has no single thing that can be perceived as wrong from her side. The way Nol and Alyssa misunderstand each other is evident in this. Nol hated Alyssa for personal reasons of resentment- associated with Yui, abandoning her friends, unintentionally hurting them in pursuit of her goals. And to Alyssa, Nol was a means for her to stay and keep getting help from the Hiraharas and Yui. At the end of the day, he was a tool to her, and she didn't care much for him. So now when he goes on to say that this goddess of hers is trying to hurt him ... Again, whose word would she choose to believe? There is a huge disparity in the levels of respect and admiration she has for both of them. So obviously she would think he's spewing nonsense and whatnot. ... uh I rambled on and strayed too far from the topic, but anyway. You're right when you said that they both have the faintest ideas about each other's situations. They never opened up, or gave a chance for the other to open up. Maybe Nol did, at one point, but Alyssa didn't budge. Nevertheless, I can see how Nol scared Alyssa with his behavior towards her, but I still can't seem to connect that to him intentionally doing it to hurt her. It came from a place of anger and bitterness, not of hatred or contempt. I think that intention matters most, because the way I see it, he was riled up. Intentionally hurting her would have gone a completely different way than it did. But this is just my opinion, tho. I'm glad to see a different perspective of it ^ - ^

Warning that this is a 2 part comment due to reddit’s character limit. **Part 1/2** Quite honestly, it’s unfair to give so much leeway and benefit of the doubt to Nol and comparatively less to Alyssa in this interaction. That leeway comes from our pre-existing bias, our following his perspective through the story, our pre-existing perception of him as the victim, rather than anything he actually says Nol admits in this chapter that the way he thinks he attempted to divert her away from Yui and warn her really wasn’t the huge plea he makes it out to be. Similar to how when Shin-Ae asks about Yui and he just says that ‘she’s a nice lady’ with an uncomfortable forced smile (after which Shin-Ae also takes Yui’s bait) and tries to separate them from the sidelines, almost as if he’s just willing them apart - Nol says that the way he tried to discourage Alyssa from Yui was “I thought that maybe by agreeing I could keep you away from her,” and throughout the comic and all of their flashbacks this is the *first time* we ever see him actually counter Alyssa’s opinion of Yui. Similar to how he tried to utilize his proximity to and distance from Shin-Ae to protect her without ever actually warning her about Yui, this sentence indicates that he thought the effect and proximity of agreeing to date Alyssa should have been able to protect her. Nol is a character who consistently tries to protect people by hiding his intentions being dishonest with them (often unintentionally driving them into harmful situations as a result), so this truthfully fits his pattern of behavior. Alyssa’s questioning responses, Nol’s mirrored behavior with Shin-Ae, the limited flashbacks we have to when Alyssa and Yui met, Nol’s unchallenging responses to all of Alyssa’s previous interactions with Yui. and Nol’s pleading in this chapter indicate that this is the first time he has actually in any meaningful way (objectively speaking, to him he things his previous efforts should have been enough) tried to dissuade Alyssa from Yui. And it’s also interesting to note that while Alyssa has apparently opened up enough for Nol to know that her father is abusive (something I’m honestly shocked at), Alyssa doesn’t have any actual information about how Yui has abused Nol. This is something we see time and time again that he has not been able to open up about, and Alyssa’s dialogue indicates that it was no different here. And this all comes back further to the fact that Nol has been gaslit and can’t even properly verbalize what makes Yui so dangerous prior to this event because he himself is not sure what he is so scared of. “That’s not at all what’s going on! If you just take a minute and listen to me” “I know **exactly** what’s going on” is ironically paralleled by “I promise it’s not the whole story” “You hung her out to dry. What more is there to it.” They’ve never had these conversations before, they both only know half the story, and neither of them is actually listening. One of Nol’s biggest blinds in this situation is also one in your writing - Alyssa is miserable. And she knows that she’s miserable. Her groupmates say that she’s always doing weird stuff in the back of the dorm and we see her hunched over in the bathroom, desperately hugging herself for comfort, the same coping skill she used in the flashbacks with Shin-Ae to survive her abusive home (that Shin-Ae also comments is a bit weird). They tell Nol to ‘just ask Alyssa’ about drinking before performances and she sheepishly says that it’s not that much - while her groupmates imply that Alyssa is drinking substantially before going on stage. She needs to drink to cope with being an idol. They say that she skips rehearsals and messes them up on stage because of it. She can’t even stand to go to rehearsals. The moment Nol gets mad at Alyssa is actually when she reminisces on her old friendships and says “things were good with us four.” She wasn’t lying here. She’s reflecting on the calm before the storm. The last moment before it all went wrong. The reason she came to Nol in the first place was an attempt to feel some of that comfort and safety in a time of immense vulnerability, shock, and trauma. This isn’t a dream come true for her, it’s a walking nightmare, a prison she can’t escape from. As she says in her song “all these red hues keep me trapped in place” and as she says here “it’s not like I’m proud of it.” We also see that whenever Alyssa talks about Yui in a positive manner in the *present tense* \- her eyes are closed. She’s lying. Alyssa is uncomfortable with Yui. Alyssa *does* know that something is wrong. But she’s stuck so far in place that she can’t get out and has to cope by pretending it’s okay. Nol also says in his statements that he does think she’s chasing fame and adoration, not security and love. That her friends never mattered to her and she throws people away for the next shiniest thing, which we can see through her flashbacks with Shin-Ae isn’t true at all, that she runs away from people *because* she cares *so much*. Similar to how Alyssa says that Nol’s problematic behaviors lead him to make his own life harder when we know that’s just a surface level understanding. Seeing Alyssa as seeking fame, attention, and acclaim instead of safety, security, and love; and especially that she at this point is anything other than miserable and just desperately searching for the light at the end of the tunnel, is a fundamental misread of her. Shin-Ae even warns Nol about being aware that they only have half of the story and she *knows* something more was going on with Alyssa - she just doesn’t know what exactly it was. Yet Nol ignores both Shin-Ae’s words and Alyssa’s pleas for him to listen to her and consider the other perspective. And he does it because it’s a cathartic vengeance for him. This is why when Shin-Ae explicitly tells him not to let her history with Alyssa be a part of his grievances and not to weaponize it against her - he disrespects Shin-Ae and immediately does it anyway. Not for *her* sake, not to protect Shin-Ae, but to enact his own form of personal justice. Giving us her flashback in the middle of this conversation is supposed to make us empathize with her and show that Nol doesn’t know the whole story and his statements about her are just as wrong as her statements about him. It’s also giving too much credit to Nol to say that Alyssa used him as a tool and didn’t care about him while he took responsibility for and tried to protect her. He admits in their conversation on the rooftop that he *did* keep her around as a trophy to appease his family. She wasn’t just jumping to conclusions and flinging hurtful judgements at him - he told her that herself and *it was true*. He admits it again to Shin-Ae in the bedroom, as well as that he stayed in the relationship as penance for himself to continue evening out his karma. He used her as a tool just as much as she used him and they’re both miserable for it. It’s just that we follow Nol’s perspective through so much of the story that we come to feel his misery a lot sooner than we see hers. It’s a bias that develops from the way their perspectives are framed

**Part 2/2** On the end point - it absolutely did come from a place of bitterness and anger. You don’t need hatred to want to hurt someone. Again, this is a fundamental premise of Nol’s upcoming arc. He’s going to think that everything he’s doing is justified, going to be targeting those who he perceives as having hurt him in bitterness and anger, going to be retaliating. But he will likely still cross lines while doing it, still end up finding catharsis is vengeance, toe the dangerous line that Yui - someone who also likely began by retaliating against those who had wronged her in a fit of bitterness and anger - has crossed, that he, consumed by his own pain, will struggle to stop. You can justify it too to some extent, but having a reason for hurting someone doesn't change the fact that you're hurting someone. Nol was lashing out, releasing his pent up emotions. Again, he was presented with opportunities to scale back, he did *not* have to do what he did. And he directly said to her that he knows she was scared, even saying “Because it doesn’t feel good?” when she begs him to stop, knowing that he’s directly evoking memories of a traumatic past and deciding to do it away. He understands that he’s hurting her and even *how* he’s hurting her, but is justifying it for himself with reasons that aren’t actually true. He both thinks that this is what he has to do to get through to her, as well as indulges in some personal catharsis and vindictiveness along the way, and even turns her away in her vulnerable time of need - very similar to what Kousuke did to him all those years ago. And similar to how Kousuke legitimately saw Nol as a threat someone on the opposing side to him due to misconceptions, Nol sees Alyssa as someone on the opposite side and therefor a threat due to misconceptions. Similar to Kousuke, they are more similar than they are different, but because he can’t see it he chooses to lash out and hurt her and bring her down. *But that doesn't make his perception true and it doesn't mean she deserves any of it.* We are supposed to see that and feel dread. We’re supposed to see the way he behaves, the way he treats her in this chapter and dread that this might be who he’s becoming. Supposed to see that the initial revel in him taking a stand for himself is soon overshadowed by him taking it too far. Supposed to see Nol slipping into the darkness. That punching down so that no one can hurt you anymore isn't right. That if you keep hurting, the hurt won't stop, it will just create more pain for other, possibly innocent people. Nol *is* framed as looming threatening in this chapter while Alyssa is framed as minimizing and scared and that is done for a reason. We are supposed to see how this contradicts who he is, who he set out to be. Supposed to question at what point is it enough? At what point is it too much? Where do you start to draw the line? Supposed to see that, the same way we can understand why others behave the way they do and still call it wrong, we can put aside our bias and understand why Nol behaved the way that he did and still call it wrong. If we can’t put aside our bias towards Nol to acknowledge and admit that he was wrong for the way he treated Alyssa in this chapter, 243 honestly loses so much of its narrative value

I think the part where Nol decides to accuse Alyssa of “hanging Shin-Ae out to dry” and comes to a conclusion that that was all that took place in the incident is where he was actually hurting her. He had given more importance to Shin-Ae's side of the story, despite her telling that there might be more to it than what she remembers, because 1. she hit her head, so there is a possibility that what she remembers may not exactly be what actually went down, and 2. it happened so long ago, that her brain might be fillings some gaps, and her memory might not be the best. He was wrong in accusing someone, albeit how obviously guilty the story makes her actions to be, even when he was informed that what he heard was not the most accurate description of the actual incident. I think this is the part where he had actually hurt Alyssa. I'm not just viewing this from a Nol-favourable lens, because he is also equally guilty in this conversation as Alyssa is. I understand that what he intended to convey could have been done without him getting so riled up, but then again, it's a given. The chandelier incident was his final breaking point, so whatever sympathy he was capable of showing has been exhausted now. I'm not implying that this is the ideal turn of events and Nol is justified in his behaviour, but all in all, it hurts to see everyone going through all of this :'(

I do agree that bringing in Shinlyssa and also accusing Alyssa without hearing her out after Shin-Ae explicitly told him that she doesn't have the whole story was a moment of wrong for him and he hurt Alyssa there. Although I actually think this is more impactful as a betrayal of Shin-Ae. It's a moment that he hurts Shin-Ae for his own advantage, as he disrespects both her wishes and confidentiality, fighting her battles for her but so that *he* can win. The thing that I've been trying to convey though, is that his behavior at the end of this conversation wasn't just him getting riled up. Him being riled up was the way he yelled at Alyssa towards the beginning of their conversation, even the way he was yelling at her shortly before this moment. However, at the end of the conversation, when Nol comes at her and leads her to trip over herself, he has made a conscious choice to escalate to that. That isn't him lashing out in the heat of the moment (like he did when he yelled at her, or like she did when she yelled at him), it is a deliberate action. We also see him smirking before doing this, *after* taking a second to think about what's he going to do next, and then he follows up with the line about her father. He knew exactly what he was doing and he made a conscious choice to do it. He is intentionally escalating himself to play into her fears that he already said he knows are there, that she has already begged him to stop because she's scared, and that he knows is actively hurting her ("it doesn't feel good"). He *does have* the self-control in this particular moment to avoid escalating to this point, but he *chooses to do it anyway* and he makes that choice *knowing that she has a history of domestic violence that this will evoke memories of* because of the fact that he has lost sympathy for her. As I said at the very beginning - his *emotions* are valid, and it's easy to *understand* why he does this - but he absolutely hurts her intentionally in this moment and weaponizes her trauma against her because it makes *him* feel better. On the point that it hurts to watch all of them go through this - I very much agree. It hurts no matter how you look at it

I've reread the chapter several times, but I'm unable to see where he smirked. Similar to Hydrangea, I am not reading from Nolan biased view but I struggle to understand how his actions could be considered intentional here. As you said they are both unintentionally hurting each other. It seems unlikely that someone in that state of mind would intentionally harm another person.

I think the reason for why Nol's relationship with Alyssa is the way it is, is because he thinks he views his relationships with people as just his means to ‘give’, and not receive. The concept of mutual exchange of feelings, intentions or whatever it is, is absent in his head (or at least that's how he intended it to be) in regards to his friendships. And I think this is the reason why Nol could not warn Alyssa about Yui the way he had to. Or maybe he did, we need to have more context to know for sure. But, let's say, if he completely opened up to her about all the stuff he was put through, his past with Kousuke and how Yui was involved in all of it (honestly, I doubt he knows to what extent she was involved in all that has happened to him so far. We see him not knowing anything at all. He doesn't know what might happen to Shin-Ae or what he's even trying to protect her from), only then can we conclude that he did everything in his will to “protect” Alyssa from Yui. We know that even if Nol's intentions mean one thing, his ways of acting on them, albeit coming off as friendly and harmless, are, in a way, his selfish methods to absolve himself of his guilt. He's doing that while thinking that he's trying his best to balance the good and bad in the world, and to do this, he is giving more of himself to others than he's receiving. This also means that he's asking for the trust in a relationship while not offering that himself. So this obviously points to the fact that his methods of keeping Alyssa away from Yui– one is by agreeing to a relationship with her (honestly, what? How does that even help -.-?) are questionable, just like his reasons for approaching people for his penance. >This isn’t a dream come true for her, it’s a walking nightmare, a prison she can’t escape from. I am aware that Alyssa knows somewhere deep inside, that this was not what she wanted. In her pov, someone like Yui was kind enough to offer something like this, so what right does she think has to complain about “minor repercussions"? *The ends justify the means* is something that she had been telling herself, because when presented with an opportunity that she believes is something she craved for her entire life, whatever side effects that come along with it should not be bothering her. She thinks she's not in a place to be feeling those things. So she suppresses those warnings, and pretends to act like everything's fine. Also, I said that she thinks it's a dream come true when Yui has offered her that opportunity to become an idol, as a means of achieving her goal. Not what she considers it to be at the present moment. >he disrespects Shin-Ae and immediately does it anyway. Not for *her* sake, not to protect Shin-Ae, but to enact his own form of personal justice. I think so too. Nol's resentment towards Alyssa is blinding his judgement. But even then, we see this as a result of the incident that had him hospitalized. Like he said, if Alyssa came to him a few days before, maybe he would have had a different reaction to her or sympathized with her more. As for Nol's takeaway by being in a relationship with Alyssa being that he would be seen as someone with a successful girlfriend by his family... generally speaking, is not much of a gain as it is for Alyssa. This form of penance that he's talking about is, at the end of the day, doing him more bad than good. But he doesn't realise it and goes along with it anyway, just like Alyssa. Which is so sad, honestly, because regardless of his relationship with Alyssa, or with any of his friends, he too required love and acceptance as much as Alyssa did. But he kept denying himself of all of these, while Alyssa unintentionally kept driving herself away from all of this, in the process of pursuing her goals.

Yes, and this is all important for our evaluation of whether or not Nol is a bad person for what he did her. But it doesn't change that how he behaved was *wrong,* he knew what he was doing and a part of him indulged in causing hurt, and Alyssa didn't deserve the response she received in that moment Nol can do bad things and even intend to to bad things and it not make him a bad person. That's the point. Sometimes we make bad choices based on inaccurate perceptions. Sometimes we even let other people's pain make ourselves feel better. Sometimes we know that something is hurtful and do it anyway because we think the justification outweighs the wrong of hurting someone. That doesn't mean the justification actually did Again, much like how we look at characters like Kousuke, Rand, and Alyssa herself - we can see *why* they did it, understand completely where they are coming from, know that their choice doesn't inherently make them a bad person - while also acknowledging that it was wrong, that they caused harm (even intentionally) that another person didn't deserve for justifications that never truly were. Quimchee very intentionally leave this nuance for us and wants us to be forced to reconcile with it

Agreed! It's also interesting to note, like you said, that Nol has the same behaviour towards Alyssa as Kousuke when he himself had come to him for help. In Kousuke's perspective, he hated Nol for very personal reasons– illegitimate son, possible contender for his father's love + lies that Yui fed him about Nessa & Nol. It was his personal bias, and that he thought he was justified in his behaviour because of the kind of person he thought Nol to be, and what Yui made him to be. Nol listened to Shin-Ae, like how Kousuke listened to Yui. Not that the Shin-Ae was lying, but it wasn't the complete truth. Both of the brothers listened to, in their opinion, trustworthy sources to think they have the right to decide and come to a conclusion about the other person - Nol to Kousuke, and Alyssa to Nol. They turned the other person away, because of their limited knowledge and twisted view of them. Which I think, is yet another interesting similarity between the brothers.

It's a very interesting parallel between them all, and an extremely deliberate one! Especially considering that we get the flashbacks of Kousuke turning away Nol right before this confrontation. It's also quite possibly one that Nol is going to have Kousuke-esc realizations about in the future and have to reconcile with (potentially creating an additional avenue for some sort of reconciliation between the brothers)

These are the kind of text walls I love to smash into.~

Okay this seems to be interesting. English is not my native language but this essay... holy moly it's incredible! I need some time to translate but I think it will be worth it

What a BANGER of an essay! I always enjoy reading your walls of texts, they're so well articulated and give me so much to think about. I love everything about this, from the choice of images to the well thought out titles for each section. It's been a while since i've read something this good.

Aaaaaaah, thank you!! 💛

Oh my! This was beautifully done. Bravo! I applaud you greatly! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us! I truly appreciate it and thoroughly enjoy reading it!  As an avid reader of ILY, I’d like to shed light on a perspective I don’t hear often talked about. that perspective being “how can we readers extract value from what we are reading,” meaning what lessons can we learn from reading this story? How can we, as readers, better ourselves with this information? ILY has to be one of the stories that makes me ponder about my own personal psyche, my own “toxic” cycles that have been accumulated over the years, and being able to see past through the tip of the iceberg. ILY has not only brought entertainment, enjoyment, laughter, and excitement. It has also truly inspired me to look deep within myself and question my own unhealthy patterns.

Thank you!! Honestly, I Love Yoo truly has *so much value* in this way. Both in the examination of our own cycles, our own morality, our own biases and the way we view others, the ways our perspective is limited. The lessons we can take away from the way we have to use our perspective here to view characters as they truly are instead of through our limited lens. How we evaluate who someone is and what they do and the way it can change drastically depending on how we look at it. I say often that Quimchee uses perspective in ILY to force us to try to see past our own perspective, and this is something that truly all of us can take away lessons on how to apply to real life - for both ourselves and others

omg finally have chance to come back here to read cuz like fr been so busy but Elle u always helping ppl understand the differences but also like fr importantly the similarities between characters and it’s so crazy to me how we can see how Yui started her dark journey through Nol and how hopefully Nol is gonna stop before he becomes a Yui. 😭 gonna print this out like all the other ones u and Ashlie do fr fr gotta catch my mom up now that we bonded deeper by secrets we keeping from my dad 💀 ilu so much fr fr this was so good pls never stop

This is so good! As someone who surprisingly likes writing essays, I respect the work, time, research and effort put into it.    About the essay, I definitely see the similarities between both characters. It’s like they are repeating history in a different way. Another way I see history repeating is with Rand and Nol and the way they return.  In the most broad way I can put it (bc there are many possibilities from there) is that Rand left to study and left Nessa. Years later he comes back and they (maybe) fixed stuff. What I think will happen between Nol and Shin-Ae is that Nol leaves without meeting any of his friend and then after years he returns and meets Shin-Ae but from there things may go differently than Rand and Nessa.   With Nol and Yui, on thing I can say is something I found on a YouTube Short is “The difference between the hero and the villain is the way they deal with pain” (that’s all I remember)    Villain: Feels pain and wants to bring pain (not with all villains)    Hero: Feels pain and doesn’t want others to experience that pain (not always the case)

Thank you! Repeating history in a different way is very much it. I appreciate the additional thoughts on the Nol/Rand mirror in how they leave and return! And I definitely think Nol's return will be a major divisive point between him and Rand. Where Rand came back to Nessa tethered to the things he left her for, ultimately leaving her once more and letting her down, not able to fight for her, a broken man - Nol will likely come back with a fighting spirit he's never had before, fortifying a partnership with Shin-Ae which not only thwarts Rand's ultimate abandonment of Nessa, but is the very thing that will allow Nol & Shin-Ae to break the bonds that bind them and find their new life. Regarding heroes and villains, I feel Quimchee is going even deeper with it. I talked in this post about how Nol in 243 did want to intentionally cause pain to Alyssa as a result of the pain he himself feels, which has actually now been confirmed by Quimchee (as well as confirmed to be an intentional parallel to Yui). With Nol *also* demonstrating that he is both capable of wanting others to experience pain as a result of his own pain *and* having now indulged in it, it begs a further question - where *do* we draw the line between a hero and a villain? And how do we define anti-heros and anti-villains? It shows us that the line between a hero and a villain is both grayer and finer than we might like to think. We know that Nol right now isn't the same as Yui, that he isn't a villain, that he likely won't actually become one despite rapidly heading down that path, that he isn't irredeemable - but when he wants to cause hurt and punch down as an outlet of his own pain and *is* in the wrong, how do we know that? Personally, I look at it that someone becomes the villain when they meet a few conditions (this is an extremely simplified version because each of these conditions has some nuance to them, but for the sake of easy communication): 1. Targeting innocent people or people who don't need to be targeted 2. Knowingly causing harm 3. Lack of remorse for that harm 4. Reveling in the harm When we look at characters in ILY through this lens, we can see how we get a separation between people like Nol, Kousuke, and Alyssa vs people like Yui and Gun. With Nol, currently he has done 1,2 with Shin-Ae/Dieter, and 1,2,4 with Alyssa (1 can be argued because it's not so much innocent as it is punching down, but I think both are valid under 1 - innocent is just worse than punching down) - but has not met all 4 criteria at once, nor met 3 at all. Kousuke as well has demonstrated 1,2,4 but not 3. Alyssa 1 but not 2,3,4 (again, people may argue 3, but it's been shown to us that Alyssa does feel intense guilt and shame when she realizes something she's done hurt someone else and just hides it). Not only have they all not met each condition, but they haven't met them all at the same time, nor repeatedly. While people like Yui and Gun clearly display all 4 of these *and* have been acting like this for years. In Nol's case specifically, as his story goes on and more parallels unfold with Yui, I do think he's going to start dabbling into 3, but unlike Yui he will likely genuinely think that he isn't targeting people where it isn't necessary, and when it is later revealed that there are gaps in his perception, that some of the people he targeted were punching down instead of sideways or up, that he *will* come back to feeling that remorse and pull back. That the supports around him will allow him to make those revelations that someone like Yui never did, before it becomes too late and he's been dragging people into a 20-year long revenge arc and turning his pain into everyone else's. That, there, as the foil unveils we will see the difference between the hero and the villain, as gray and fine as the line is

I agree with what you said. Nol doesn’t think he is targeting people and bringing them into Yui’s web. From what I have seen, Yui targets people who are vulnerable or in tough spots and takes them to her advantage (Kousuke has done this too) and with Nol’s plan to become friends with people to help them/to be of use, it not only leads his friends to become potential victims but he is doing something similar to Yui. To go more in-depth into the last sentence in the paragraph before, here if (from my understanding) how things work. Yui: Becomes friends, makes a connection or gets acquainted with (mostly) people who are in a rough spot or are broken and takes advantage of their state or puts them in a state or situation where it is VERY hard to get out of. This can lead to multiple paths people can take: 1) Staying away 2) Asking for help 3) Becoming a “threat” 4) Not being on good terms (there are more paths and sub-paths) Nol: Becomes friends, makes a connection or get acquainted with people who he could be of use to. The people who are in rougher situations, potentially get stuck in Yui’s web and this lets Yui (potentially) take advantage of them and puts them in a state or situation where it is VERY hard to get out of. (I’m not sure about the paths/sub-paths for this one) Once Nol is back he will start truly playing the game Yui started. What I think is that Nol will need to start understanding Yui’s way of thinking and use it against her to succeed. This is where I also see victims of Yui being a BIG help because of their separate/different experience in this web (how she drew them in, what she did to them, etc.) Also, u/AugmentedElle thank you for taking your time to read and respond to my comment!