✧ BOOK NOTES ; 02 ✧

so here's another extra chapter with info about the story, just like how i did when PART 1 ended :]

i'm trying a different format for this one, since there's more to cover now that a longer PART has ended. in case you're curious, the topics i'll put here is in the table of contents below:

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table of contents;

01. of love & war

02. on V's lies & games

03. of seojun & yerin

04. on V & jeongguk's toxic relationship

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— no.001 ; OF LOVE & WAR

At the end of PART 1, the first thing I shared in the first Book Notes was the meaning of PART 1's title "Metamorphosis." So of course, it only makes sense for me to explain PART 2's title "Of Love & War."

The meaning of 'War' in this context isn't really in the context of battle, politics or in a military setting. It's used more loosely, to describe a person's inner battles or a 'personal war' someone's dealing with in their life.

So if there's Love and there's War; then Jeongguk is Love. He grew up around love, knows how to give love and believes in the good of love.

Taehyung is War. He grew up fighting for his belief of freedom in a toxic environment, only knows cruelty, and believes in the worst of love.

The beauty of PART 2 is that Love and War start to intermix somewhere along the way. War (Taehyung) realizes that he has love, and Love (Jeongguk) realizes that he has war.

Love & War go together. Without love there is no war, and without war there is no love. One can only know happiness once they realize sadness. But the two can coexist, learn from each other, teach each other.

Through Jeongguk, Taehyung learns love, and through Taehyung, Jeongguk learns war (meaning the dangers of the underground scene, his encounters with Acre, etc.)

They come to understand each other, and coexist. Together, I believe they'll cancel out the bad qualities of both love and war.

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— no.002 ; ON V's LIES & GAMES

So it's pretty obvious that V is kind of the 'wild card' of all the alters. Especially at the beginning, you're never quite sure what he's thinking, what kind of mood he'll be in, or how he would react to certain things; which is why Jeongguk often feels he's walking on eggshells around him.

It also doesn't help that V himself has accepted the kind of 'villainous' behavior he knows he possesses. He takes amusement in toying with people just for the fun of it, and is the type to push at your buttons just to draw a reaction out of you, or make others take part in things just to see how it would play out - like the time he made Jeongguk deliver drugs merely for his entertainment, and to see what kinds of chain events it would bring later on.

He also takes amusement in telling small lies. Again, to draw a reaction or to see certain facial expressions in people. In a way he also indulges in this behavior to see what kind of person someone is, since how they react would tell him a lot about their personality. This is how he's able to subconsciously make a conclusion that Jeongguk is a good soul, and makes an effort to push him away so that dealing with Taehyung and the other alters doesn't sully him. It's a kind of defense mechanism, in a weird way.

V himself isn't a bad person. But you could say he's simply a product of the environment he grew up in. He realizes this and tells Jeongguk that "We're alike, you and I."

If Jeongguk were to be the one to have grown up in the environment Taehyung did, things would've turned out very differently. Same goes for Taehyung growing up with a loving family as Jeongguk did.

With that I want to talk about Taehyung's character a bit more, which was by far the most challenging thing for me :']

I'll go more into depth with the individual alters in the last book notes, since with Taehyung I can't focus only on one development, but rather there's 5 character developments going on all at the same time, at different speeds (V being the slowest character development).

I purposely wrote this story in a way where the readers can easily get confused over which alter is fronting, especially at the beginning. Whether it's Taehyung, or Vante, or Dot, or V (excluding X because he never fronts but rather exists in the mind): you're never quite sure at fist, and that's because Jeongguk himself doesn't know either, and I wanted to keep the narrative more in his perspective.

Once Jeongguk comes to realize Taehyung's situation, he starts to notice these changes he could sense in Taehyung from the start, but wasn't quite sure why they were there. It makes more sense to him now, so the readers get to be let in on it too; and suddenly it's easier to differentiate between the alters.

An example of this is how Taehyung and V both used to call Jeongguk 'Jeon'. This is something you first associate with V, only to realize Taehyung does it too, and then later Taehyung assures Jeongguk that he won't call him that anymore. So now saying 'Jeon' becomes an easy way to tell that it's V.

It's also really convenient that Jeongguk gets to call Taehyung as 'Hyung' which will apply to all the alters, and is an easy way to refer to him if he's not sure who's fronting.

Even at the beginning, Jeongguk realizes that there's something more to Taehyung. I tried to convey that in the first chapter of PART 2: Of Love & War. There's a scene where Jeongguk looks into Taehyung's eyes and it's described he, "saw fire, and stars, and violent waves in his eyes. Saw strength, and fear, and sorrow." Which was then brought up again in the previous chapter 77.

This is just to show that he's had a subconscious realization of the other alters' existence.

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— no.003 ; OF SEOJUN & YERIN

Ah yes, the exes.

Always a fun time writing about main characters and their ex lovers! But ironically enough, both Jeongguk and Taehyung's exes played very important roles in PART 2.

In Seojun's case, his relationship with Jeongguk didn't work out because he cheated on him. This situation is introduced at the very first chapter, and because of this Seojun becomes as a sort of antagonist of Jeongguk's emotions throughout the beginning of the story. But gradually, you see that Jeongguk learns to forgive and forget, and suddenly Seojun's presence isn't important enough to be malicious. In fact Jeongguk's focus and emotions completely redirect toward Taehyung instead.

More importantly Seojun himself doesn't stay an asshole cheater. He has character growth as well—we see him genuinely worry for Jeongguk, even trying to protect him from Taehyung when he (well, V) is the one doing him the most harm.

In Chapter 19 of PART 2, Seojun explains himself to Jeongguk on why he cheated. Of course, as the reader it's natural to doubt him on whether he was genuine or not, but the conversation was mature, and by the end of it all we can see that he really did change as a person.

I wanted to make my characters 'real' in the sense that the mistakes they make don't always make them a terrible person. Real people have their ups and downs, and as such i wanted to portray that in these characters.

Seojun and Jeongguk were high school sweethearts, who committed themselves to a relationship while they were much too young to fully understand themselves and the world around them. Subconciously, Seojun came to realize this, and decided to experiment behind Jeongguk's back. This is where he fails to make a moral choice, but he didn't really know any better. The 'correct' way to have gone about it was to have that mature conversation earlier, and end things with Jeongguk before exploring other people. But well, people aren't perfect and free of flaws, after all.

And then there's Yerin.

In Yerin's case, her relationship with Taehyung didn't work out because, quite frankly, Taehyung wasn't yet accustomed to his DID enough to handle a healthy relationship.

I was excited yet very cautious of writing Yerin as a character. I knew she had a role (a very important one) to play in V's own character development, but at the same time I was worried she wouldn't be well received by the readers. I'm aware that sometimes female characters get negativity, especially in boy x boy stories, because a girl would 'interfere' with the love the boys have for each other. At least that's how it feels people see it.

On the contrary Yerin has always supported Taehyung and Jeongguk together, and tried to her best ability to assist the progression of Taekook's love story.

She becomes the 'best friend' character, once she and V heal entirely from associating with each other as lovers. Despite Taehyung being popular around others in school, mostly because of his looks and charms, he never really had other friends outside his Bangtan circle. He pushes people away because of his disorder, and only really has Namjoon and Yerin to rely on.

We can first see that Taehyung is comfortable around Yerin in Part 2's chapter 14, in the scene where he lays his head on her lap. This is later referenced in Chapter 76.5, but Taehyung lays his head on Jeongguk's lap instead, to show that he's found a new comfort person.

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— no.004 ; ON V & JEONGGUK'S TOXIC RELATIONSHIP

I feel like this is something I should speak out about, since it involves a very sensitive topic: that being, abuse and/or domestic abuse, both physical and verbal.

I do enjoy when readers drop their opinions, and I enjoy watching it change as they progress through the story. That being said, I've inevitable seen a few comments on V's behavior early in the book, mostly before Taehyung's past was fully revealed, but also after that.

So I want to clarify: yes, Vkook's relationship was not healthy.

Abuse shouldn't be overlooked, and it is frustrating to see the victim go back time and time again despite it not being good for them. Readers are likely to call these characters 'stupid' for overlooking abusive behavior from their love interest, and although this is very common behavior that happens in real life (therefore an accurate, believable thing to portray through a character) that wasn't the kind of 'story' I intended for V and Jeongguk.

It's easy to call out abuse and condemn a story on it, but there are layers to these characters and their situations. and I certainly didn't write the characters this way, dealing with these serious problems, just for the 'fun' of it and definitely not to romanticize it.

Readers would often get disappointed in V, saying he hasn't 'changed' therefore Jeongguk should immediately drop him. but Jeongguk doesn't, and that's because he understands V's condition. On top of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), V is the only alter to suffer from Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) where irrational anger outbursts are common. When someone with IED is having an outburst, common sense is not present. They're not thinking correctly, and are not acting within their own clear mind.

What is often overlooked between the usual abuse story and V's abuse toward Jeongguk, lies within the fact V doesn't actually have much control of his aggression. His IED makes him unable to just 'change' as readers would like him to. In fact, it would be entirely unrealistic for V to just wake up one day and go "hm, maybe I just won't abuse anyone today!"

It's not like he wants to—he didn't want to hurt Yerin, and he also didn't want to hurt Jeongguk.

There's aggression built into his core, from his childhood as well as observing his uncle's behavior. Hence, what had led to DID in Taehyung as well as IED in V himself. It's a lot of mental instability for anyone to handle, and certainly not as 'simple' as just deciding to change because—well, why not?

Assuming that all it takes for him to stop his abuse is a simple choice, is the same as ignoring his mental condition. It's like saying, "But why don't you just walk?" to a person on a wheelchair, who's lost their leg.

Wanting to change is easier said than done, which is why V's story will always be a tragic one, in a sense. People will always believe he's actively making choices to abuse others, therefore assume he's a worse person than he actually is.

Of course, there's other behavior he partakes in (such as being unfaithful and sleeping around with others) that can't be blamed to his IED, but rather are things he does to push others away.

I hope this explains a little more. I suggest you do your own research on these topics if you'd like to understand better. But again, I'm not trying to and will never try to justify abuse. I'm simply portraying it in a realistic setting, in a scenario where the abuse isn't wanted even by the abuser himself.

It's important to note that V would have never struggled with these violent impulses, had he not been raised by his abusive uncle. It's because Jeongguk understands this, that he was unwilling to give up on him.

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If you've read up to this point, then thank u!! I really appreciate you all for supporting this story and sticking around even when I get too busy to keep a consistent schedule lololol

But I always make time because writing is a hobby of mine!

So with that, get ready for:

[ PART 3: EXODUS ]

The last part is finally comingggg! The story will be concluded with this last part, that's so crazy to think about. If PART 1 was a long prologue, then PART 3 is the extended epilogue.

If you're following me you'll get the update notification when I post it on my message board 💜

Thank you for your continuing support!

:]