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itsdrawingmen · 2 months ago

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We need to talk about Zen.

Every character in Mystic Messenger is a tragic one, and the Casual Story trio is often disregarded in that respect. But there is one character for whom I’ve hardly seen it explored at all. Maybe it’s because his route sucks such major ass, or because he’s honestly a bit of an asshole, misogynistic, homophobic, and ableist; or maybe it’s because his trauma is only briefly, fleetingly mentioned, as he and his friends refer to it, and then quickly brush it aside.

Zen Ryu, beautiful, stupid, and self-absorbed, is, on the surface, a perfect comic relief character, a beloved himbo, brash but well-intentioned. And I think this wonderful actor has been playing that role so well that he has fooled everyone, including the fandom.

Some character exploration and the uncropped art under the cut.

It’s no secret that Zen’s selfishness is nothing but a coping mechanism, masking a deep-set fear of inadequacy and paralysing self-doubt. It’s stated explicitly by Ray in Another Story, and it’s pretty evident from the way Zen is quick to worry there’s nothing more to him than his looks.

It’s obvious where he got it, considering how his mother treated him and his passions, and how his brother turned his back on him when he needed him the most. But there are more things I haven’t seen discussed anywhere, and I have a lot of thoughts and headcanons, and simply questions, so let’s start from the very beginning.

It’s made very clear in Zen’s route that his early life was… well, horrible. As early as kindergarten, he started getting singled out for his looks. Strangers kept staring at him and wanting to touch him, which bothered his mother.

Instead of getting on their child’s side, little Hyun’s parents tried to convince him he was ugly, to ‘humble’ him. It’s said that they just wanted him to be successful and to have a stable, secure life. Well, good intentions pave the road to hell, as it’s said. What they got as a result was a child who was harassed and stalked at school and in the streets with no one to confide in but his brother, who didn’t explicitly dismiss it, but still made light of it.

A little interesting point:

Make a note here of the ‘protection’ line, because I will get back to it later.

Anyway, whatever small support and understanding little Hyun’s brother provided him with, it wasn’t meant to last. Zen states that their parents treated them so differently they effectively separated them.

When he entered middle school and found passion for music, what his mother saw was her son turning to a precarious road and basically undermining his future. When she tried to convince him his dreams were stupid, Hyun’s brother took her side, leaving Hyun without the last person in his family who supported him. So little Hyun ran away from home, and thus began the story of Zen.

And here is where things get interesting. Zen left home when he was in middle school. A middle schooler in South Korea is anywhere between 12 and 15 years old. And a person living on their own must eat something and sleep somewhere. But here’s the catch: you can only rent if you are at least 19 (I’m assuming, Korean-19, so 18), and you can technically work part-time jobs starting at 13, but you need parental permission for that. And for any full-time job you must be 18. And this is the first big question with no easy answer: how did little Hyun survive after he left home? Where did he live, and what did he eat?

We can assume that for a while, he stayed with his friends, whom he for some reason tried to hide from his parents.

However, it would have been problematic for him to make it a long-term arrangement. If his friends were teenagers like him, their parents would be likely to tell his family where he was so that they would come collect their son. And if the friends were older and employed, it’s doubtful they would be well off enough to host a dependent long-term, unless there was something sinister going on. So the question remains: where did he live and what did he eat?

He mentions part-time jobs and extortion as sources of income, he worked night shifts to make ends meet, and there are also the mysterious 'bad things' that we will get back to later. But there are more variables here than just money.

Well, as far as I can tell, the answer to that is right here:

And now, I want you to stop for a moment and think about what this implies.

A child in his early teens (I like to assume 13-14), and a very pretty child at that, with a history of harassment that was never addressed, let alone stopped, finds himself on the street (at this point, we can presume: homeless and hungry). And he catches the eye of gangsters. Perhaps it’s my fresh experience watching ‘Banana Fish’ speaking (definitely not, I've had this conviction basically since I saw 'bad things' mentioned), but I want to really ask you: what do you think gangsters are likely to do with a beautiful and vulnerable young boy, besides use him for petty crimes Zen admits on the screens above? What 'bad things' could he have been forced to do to survive?

This admission by Zen himself doesn’t help my train of thoughts at all:

Of course, this is said in the context of exploitation at work, but given the gangs and the ‘bad things’, one can’t help but draw a connection.

Besides, this is where that screen I told you to take note of comes into play. Zen says that after middle school, he understood what his parents were trying to protect him from, essentially what dangers being pretty entailed. It couldn’t have been the usual harassment that he had been facing since kindergarten, he would have understood that by then. Another interesting point is that for someone with a gangster past, Zen is suspiciously gender nonconforming in his looks, and mellow in general demeanour. Yes, he’s rough around the edges, he’s homophobic, misogynistic, and foul-mouthed, but he isn’t really violent. Someone who used to fit in with gangs, especially as a youth, I would think, looks and acts differently. And this all takes me to a very grim conclusion: I firmly don’t believe that a good-looking and vulnerable child with no support network and with a history of harassment survived in gangs without being molested or sexually exploited once.

But let’s not delve into my headcanons and continue with the facts we have. These bits and pieces that come together to form a picture of Zen’s teenage years already paint a pretty morbid picture. But he made it big, became an actor, and left it all behind, and he’s happy in the canon timeline, right? Right?!

Wrong.

The most obvious thing is the contents of Zen’s fridge, which Jaehee points out when she goes to see him.

It’s referenced many times in the game, Zen lightheartedly says he often skips meals and in general eats pretty badly, and I think even V refers to it. And it’s easy to chalk it up to his insane diets and the expectations of his body and looks that he has to maintain to stay in the industry. Or, if you are a little like me and like to assume the worst, you can also attribute it to Zen’s borderline self-harming workaholism. But I think there’s a little bit more to it, and the key to it is actually where Zen lives.

I remember being a little confused as to why everyone was surprised that Zen lived in a semi-basement.

But I didn’t give it much thought, after all, semi-basements seem to be cheaper here as well, and Zen’s flat looked pretty nice on CGs (if extremely beige). And it wasn’t until recently when I was talking to a colleague about his friend sharing her experience in Korea that I learned that semi-basements were actually a signature dwelling of the poorest, and seemingly a clearly understandable trope for a Korean. Those semi-basement apartments are often at risk of flooding, which is apparently a well-known fact, and also why they’re supposed to be banned as residential quarters. And, of course, Zen is quick to tell everyone he likes that place with poor ventilation and little sunlight, because it’s Zen, after all. He has that working class mentality because he’s cool, and he likes underground apartments and old tech.

But it seems that the picture of his present life is also pretty grim. Now, I’m not in South Korea, and I know little about how theatre actors are paid there, but I can tell you what I know from several actor/actress friends here in Ukraine: theatre actors aren’t, unfortunately, paid shit. Even the ones you recognise and talk about, working in cool popular theatres, drop over half of their salary to rent a shitty apartment, and are left wondering what they’re going to eat. So it seems pretty likely to me that Zen’s empty fridge, old computer and mp3 player, daily subway commute, and semi-basement apartment all point to one simple fact: he’s simply poor.

And to make it worse, he seems to be extremely lonely.

I’m pretty sure he also mentions isolating himself when he’s feeling bad, but I can’t seem to find screenshots for that anywhere.

All that said, when the fandom looks at Zen, they see a self-absorbed himbo, the ‘don’t kill yourself you so sexy aha’ type of guy. And he is, and I think he’s hilarious, and I’m the first one to laugh at him tbh. But when I look at him for a little longer than a second, I see a young man who has been harassed to hell and back starting as early as kindergarten, who never graduated from school, who ran away from home in his early teens, worked multiple jobs, and still had to resort to crime to make ends meet. I see a young man who was once a vulnerable teen at the mercy of gangsters, who had to learn that all help comes with strings attached. And I see a young man struggling silently with poverty while maintaining a facade of a glamorous and charming actor.

And I think the charming actor has fooled everyone.

#god he breaks my heart #i have extensive headcanons about his teenage life in gangs #and i will talk about them to whoever asks #zen mysme #zen mystic messenger #mysme zen #mystic messenger zen #hyun ryu #ryu hyun #mysme #mystic messenger #mysmes

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