Rain Scene: In-Depth Character Analysis (18 August 21)

There are people who say that JE only stood in the rain only because he was threatened by DH and not because he genuinely likes Nabi.

Good point. But this is only partly true and there’s another side to the coin. 

The nature of the human condition is to respond to anything that threatens their goals. And JE was not the only character guilty of this.

We cannot single out JE for this, because Nabi and DH also did the same previously, sans an outburst of emotions like JE.

The very first person who displayed such a response was Nabi.

While in Ep9 she tells JE that she said this to SA in order to screw JE over, we all know that she was lying. She did it to underline her position in JE’s life by implying that they were intimate.

Next would be DH, who, when faced with the threat of JE, felt the need to impose himself in Nabi’s life. ›

He took it upon himself to speak for Nabi based on his assumptions of JE because he wanted to project himself as the better option.

Finally we get to JE, who in his desolation realised that Nabi was drifting away from him, something that he associated with DH. 

He went inside Nabi’s house for DH to see, because he wanted DH to know that Nabi and him have that kind of relationship.

All three were reacting as a response to threat, except that JE had an outburst, an explosion of emotions that have been bubbling beneath the surface for a while. 

It’s normal for people to hate JE after the confrontation, and I believe it was intentional.

In writing a character, you need to identify its desires and its fears. The easiest way to dissect character (for me) is to use the quadrant below to identify a character’s desires, ghost, false beliefs, and fears.

Nevertheless a character’s desires are what makes the character wake up every morning. 

Its ghost is from a character’s past, something that continues to hound your character and eventually leads it to believe a lie (false belief).

Fears may be self-explanatory, but a character’s greatest fears is always related to its false beliefs.

However, what makes a character more interesting is when its desires and fears conflict with each other, as in the case of Nabi.

Nevertheless we see both external and internal conflicts coming to play in our characters’ lives. For Nabi, the conflict is mainly internal and could merit a thread of its own.

But for JE and DH, there is the looming threat of each other (external conflict).

As for JE, we have yet to know his full trajectory, but we have been let in enough to understand that he really likes Nabi and wants to pursue her.

However, he did not realise this until Nabi disappeared without a single word.

Nevertheless when Nabi disappeared, he yearned for her, but still there was not enough reason for him to find her. 

JE has always given her the upper hand in their relationship, so when she was not responding to his messages/calls, he did not impose himself.

On his birthday, when SA told him what Nabi said to her the day they met on campus, he had an epiphany – maybe Nabi really likes him after all.

This bit of information was enough reason for him to set off on his heels to find her.

Alas, he finds her with a man tailing behind her. We then see JE lurking around Nabi and DH, giving jealous stares, but refusing to actively do anything.

Later that night, DH, reacting to the threat of JE’s presence, declares that Nabi was his first love.

DH later disses JE and hurts him with a lie, a presumption he made out his misinterpretation of Nabi’s story. 

At that point, DH was just an imminent threat, not yet unbearable, but already felt enough to create a hairline crack through JE’s surface.

On the other hand, DH saw JE has the threat to his goal of having Nabi, thus his attempts at being bold about his feelings for Nabi and his use of lies to deter JE.

Also, we are not privy to DH’s thoughts, so we can only identify his external conflict (JE).

We know very little of DH aside from what we see on the surface. His only desire is to get the girl. We know nothing of his past, so we cannot identify his ghosts. His false belief is that JE is a jerk, and his fear is to lose Nabi – especially to JE.

JE has his own internal conflicts that affect his relationship with Nabi. He knew that there was something wrong with him and that he needed to change if he wanted to have her back, but just when he was already trying to make an effort, there comes DH.

What’s worse is that he sees her smiling around him, he hears her openly talk to DH about her woes and blues, and he hears directly from her the reasons why he’s likeable. These formed more hairline cracks on JE’s usual collected surface.

Throughout the series, his character has been displayed as cool, calm, and collected. In Ep9, we saw JE finally give. 

His biggest mistake is that he had let it bubble beneath the surface for a long time, which led to an eventual self-sabotage.

But a person can only handle too much and is bound to make poor choices in its quest to attain its desires and eliminate threats.

And well-crafted characters are written with the same vulnerabilities as to commit the same errors that a real human would.

Nevertheless the threat of DH was supplemental to put emphasis on JE’s fear of losing Nabi and to eventually drive his character to its tipping point. As such, arguing that JE stood under the rain ONLY because of DH is only partly true.

It is very presumptive to say that JE does not genuinely like Nabi just because his character was responding to threat. It invalidates the many layers of his character which we have been shown if only we were not blinded by our own false beliefs.

mignonxminion