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Sep. 20th, 2022 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsNever has a piece of zombie media made me feel as specifically and aggressively pandered to as Surviving Romance.
This webtoon begins as a transmigration story plus timeloop: the protagonist is a romance reader who has become Chaerin Eun, High School Romance Heroine, bullied by the interchangeable mean girls in her class but destined for eventual happiness with the sweet boy of her dreams, and she is just about to lock in the confession scene and an soothing happily-ever-after when, unfortunately, she gets attacked by a zombie and dies.
Then she wakes up! It's the beginning of the day again! She has another shot to follow the plot! Over the course of the first few chapters, she faithfully attempts to follow the plot several hundred times, hyper-fixating on rescuing her love interest and getting to the pivotal confession scene, and every time the entire high school falls victim to a fast-moving zombie outbreak and she has to start over.
Then, on the 378th attempt or so, having broadly succumbed to suicidal despair, a miracle occurs: Chaerin has a significant encounter with one of the mean girls in her class, who heroically saves from being torn apart by zombies for the several hundredth time and inspires her to consider that there might be other futures available to her beyond the unattainable happy-ever-after of the original romance narrative! After that things immediately go wrong and Chaerin's new savior dies, but Chaerin vows that next timeloop round she's going to find her and save her.
Unfortunately, Chaerin can only see the non-love-interest characters in the story as irrelevant shadowy extras, so she has no idea who this other girl is.
The rest of the [first chunk of] the comic is the subsequent round of the timeloop, in which Chaerin has decided that her only option is to abandon the romance plotline and instead attempt to save every single girl in her class from zombie tragedy and also learn to identify them as people and individuals so she can figure out which one is the heroic anonymous extra who touched her heart. Romance obviously is not going to get Chaerin out of the horror story in which she has found herself, but maybe the power of friendship and lesbian subtext can! Especially when all of the anonymous extra girls in her class turn out to have personalities like 'obsessive fencing prodigy' and 'cool-headed comms genius'.
Most chapters end with a little rundown chart of all the girls that Chaerin has identified to both help the reader keep track of them and also allow the artist to show off that she can make fifteen high school girls look visually distinct and it IS very fun for me to look at all their little faces and think 'ah! this represents Friendship!'
However the part that is really AGGRESSIVELY pandering to me is when it starts getting increasingly meta, various characters begin questioning and struggling against the little narrative voice in their head that demands that they Love Chaerin or Bully Chaerin, and we learn that the zombie plot is being engineered by the original fictional Chaerin Eun, who wants transmigrated!Chaerin to hurry up and despair completely so that she can be completely integrated into the narrative as a flat character and free Original Chaerin to escape from the shackles of narrative compulsion and form a life in the real world! It's Princess Tutu hours in this here zombies-and-friendship webtoon and of course I'm here for it, I'm always here for it, I'm the literal easiest sell in the world.
This is the last image of the first season and I am sitting on the EDGE of my seat for season 2. Let's go! Pander to me harder!
This webtoon begins as a transmigration story plus timeloop: the protagonist is a romance reader who has become Chaerin Eun, High School Romance Heroine, bullied by the interchangeable mean girls in her class but destined for eventual happiness with the sweet boy of her dreams, and she is just about to lock in the confession scene and an soothing happily-ever-after when, unfortunately, she gets attacked by a zombie and dies.
Then she wakes up! It's the beginning of the day again! She has another shot to follow the plot! Over the course of the first few chapters, she faithfully attempts to follow the plot several hundred times, hyper-fixating on rescuing her love interest and getting to the pivotal confession scene, and every time the entire high school falls victim to a fast-moving zombie outbreak and she has to start over.
Then, on the 378th attempt or so, having broadly succumbed to suicidal despair, a miracle occurs: Chaerin has a significant encounter with one of the mean girls in her class, who heroically saves from being torn apart by zombies for the several hundredth time and inspires her to consider that there might be other futures available to her beyond the unattainable happy-ever-after of the original romance narrative! After that things immediately go wrong and Chaerin's new savior dies, but Chaerin vows that next timeloop round she's going to find her and save her.
Unfortunately, Chaerin can only see the non-love-interest characters in the story as irrelevant shadowy extras, so she has no idea who this other girl is.
The rest of the [first chunk of] the comic is the subsequent round of the timeloop, in which Chaerin has decided that her only option is to abandon the romance plotline and instead attempt to save every single girl in her class from zombie tragedy and also learn to identify them as people and individuals so she can figure out which one is the heroic anonymous extra who touched her heart. Romance obviously is not going to get Chaerin out of the horror story in which she has found herself, but maybe the power of friendship and lesbian subtext can! Especially when all of the anonymous extra girls in her class turn out to have personalities like 'obsessive fencing prodigy' and 'cool-headed comms genius'.
Most chapters end with a little rundown chart of all the girls that Chaerin has identified to both help the reader keep track of them and also allow the artist to show off that she can make fifteen high school girls look visually distinct and it IS very fun for me to look at all their little faces and think 'ah! this represents Friendship!'
However the part that is really AGGRESSIVELY pandering to me is when it starts getting increasingly meta, various characters begin questioning and struggling against the little narrative voice in their head that demands that they Love Chaerin or Bully Chaerin, and we learn that the zombie plot is being engineered by the original fictional Chaerin Eun, who wants transmigrated!Chaerin to hurry up and despair completely so that she can be completely integrated into the narrative as a flat character and free Original Chaerin to escape from the shackles of narrative compulsion and form a life in the real world! It's Princess Tutu hours in this here zombies-and-friendship webtoon and of course I'm here for it, I'm always here for it, I'm the literal easiest sell in the world.
This is the last image of the first season and I am sitting on the EDGE of my seat for season 2. Let's go! Pander to me harder!
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