Nemo and deranged thought processes

okay but hear me out. (drum roll noises please) morally dubious ceo (essentially into unambiguous embezzlment) jeon wonwoo sksksksks. and before you jackasses start talking; he’s morally dubious specifically when it comes to money. the type of man who would absolutely do anything to acquire it. not that it’s admirable, obviously. it’s just… a slight distortion of the angel wonwoo image. a tiny fracture in that emotionally constipated persona we usually see of him. so naturally my brain went: why not make him someone who is constipated for money instead. ahahahah.

so imagine this: he does all these questionable things, all these morally dubious little maneuvers, climbs the ladder step by step, and eventually he ends up right at the top of the pyramid. king of the hill. untouchable. and then one day he looks back. and what does he see???

intern who is younger than him by ten years. full of light. annoyingly bright in that way good people are. let's make it worse: son of his best friend. sksksksks.

do you understand the kind of narrative madness i could unleash here by stuffing the most tantalizing tropes imaginable into one story. the corruption. the power imbalance. the existential crisis of a man who clawed his way up the pyramid only to be confronted by something unbearably sincere at the bottom of it. like. come on. i just need the motivation to actually write it man sksksksksks.

i think the song i’d dedicate to this fic (if you know me, my fics essentially orbit around a designated song to the point that everything begins there) would be bad omens by 5sos. specifically the amsterdam live version. like the exact atmosphere of that performance. that slightly doomed, cinematic, “something is about to go terribly wrong but we’re still standing here anyway” energy.

but this thought also pulls me back into the larger conversation about morally dubious characters. because if you think about it, there’s actually very little representation of them in seventeen fics. which i get, to an extent. we’re technically writing about living people, not fictional or anime characters, so people hesitate to push them into darker narrative spaces.

but… the potential is right there, you know.

i remember reading ukiyo by sharleena (yoonmin), and to this day i think it’s one of the best portrayals of the villain archetype i’ve seen in fics. the motivations, the ambiguity, the sense that nobody is entirely clean. but the catch; and simultaneously the downside, was that it was the world of mafia :)

and listen. i love a good mafia trope as much as the next person. but we need more of this energy in real-life settings too man. morally questionable people who aren’t gangsters. corporate corruption. power. ambition. the quiet rot of capitalism. the kinds of people who smile politely in daylight and commit small ethical crimes at night.

that’s the stuff i want to read.

so i guess i’ll try to dip my hands into this if i ever get the time. because with a 9 to 5 (worse: i do it at night) things get rough. my love for yaoi has unfortunately reduced itself to mostly reading these days, and half the things i end up posting are just recycled fragments from previous ideas that refused to leave my brain.

but i’ll try nonetheless ig

and it randomly made me realize something. if somebody were to ask me the same question, but about meanie, I would unfortunately have a whole list prepared.

mingyu and wonwoo have been popular since melona days, so the idea that people are still getting introduced to seventeen through their love is both jarring and, frankly, a little miraculous.

and before anyone starts dismantling my carefully cultivated fujoshi reputation: yes, i ship people who look good together. i am not above aesthetics. but when i say mingyu and wonwoo are the ship; the hill, the cliff, the edge of the world i would die on, it is not an exaggeration.

here comes the straight shipper with the inevitable: “we’ll see when we get their marriage news.”

okay. and? what straight slop is that supposed to prove?

because when i say mingyu’s love for wonwoo is as transcendental as it gets, i’m not even talking about romantic love specifically. what i mean is that it seems to move through the entire spectrum of love. for those of you unfamiliar with sufism, there’s a framework of seven stages: attraction, infatuation, love, trust/reverence, worship, madness, and surrender. it traces the path of a love that becomes all-consuming.

and the thing about mingyu and wonwoo is that their dynamic feels like it touches each of these stages; not because it’s romantic, necessarily, but because it’s that intense. what makes it even more special is how natural it feels to the rest of us watching. like the two of them were meant to exist in orbit of one another. one breath, one soul, that kind of thing.

now here comes the other camp (usually ult gyuhao / wonhui): have you seen the way mingyu acts with minghao? or the way wonwoo is with junhui?

yes. obviously.

and this is where i present the radical idea that two truths can exist at the same time.

these thirteen men grew up in circumstances where they had nobody but each other. the people who stood beside them through years of uncertainty, debt, training, humiliation, exhaustion were the same twelve faces.

of course the love that came out of that environment is expansive. of course it spills everywhere. to say i hold meanie above anything else is not to derail other ships. love comes in different shapes and sizes (as i once ranted about in the absurdism of a heat calendar). it is not a fixed architecture the way people like to imagine it. wonwoo loves junhui deeply. maybe even just as much. just not in the same way he loves mingyu.

and speaking again from my fujoshi point of view: i would have loved to be wonwoo’s friend in this lifetime. not romantically. never like that. but as someone he returns to after a long voyage, sitting across from me and telling stories about the things he saw along the way. and that is precisely why i refuse to ascertain any of their sexualities.

do i personally think they’re closeted? maybe. maybe not. only the thirteen of them truly know. perhaps their families, perhaps a handful of friends. it’s not something we can claim ownership over. but what i will say is that i have rarely seen somebody love another person as fiercely yet as loyally as mingyu loves wonwoo. and i have rarely seen someone return that love as quietly, as steadily, as wonwoo does.

this rant is also partially sponsored by the fact that every time new seungyoun and wonwoo news breaks out, the first instinct some people have is to measure mingyu against whoever else exists in wonwoo’s orbit. do you people even think? if so, then rationally? do you possess even a single ounce of intellectual restraint?

for context: mingyu and wonwoo did not live together for their entire lives. they lost a game and were forced to room together once. mingyu later roomed with hao. wonwoo spent a large portion of debut-era days living with cheol.

but now?

their 2024 versions. the versions of them that exist today.

they are thirty-year-old men who consciously choose each other’s company.

and when you derail that by claiming one of them is somehow forced into proximity, you ignore the reality that they are consenting millionaires who choose to spend their time in each other’s solace.

another thing that prompted this rant was the recent twitter discourse about wonwoo being a lonely person because that old clip from in the soop season 1 resurfaced where chan calls him lonely. okay, so, have you watched gose: going volume 2? if not, please go watch it immediately and observe the air around them.

wonwoo; if not outright worshipping, gravitates toward mingyu when they’re about to leave. he calls him “min” twice in that episode. it’s not the same wonwoo from in the soop anymore. it’s a steadier, more grounded wonwoo who is also less afraid of being seen.

there’s also the context people rarely think of. wonwoo’s mother passed away on mingyu’s birthday. the same mingyu who had been on hiatus just some time before because of false accusations and couldn’t even celebrate his birthday properly. the following year, wonwoo lost his mother. next year, jeonghan brought him a small bento cake to his apartment so he could celebrate. the look of delight on that man's face on a small bento cake still haunts me.

do you understand the implications of your best friend’s mother passing away on your birthday? that grief splits both ways? some of you might not know, but wonwoo rapped in their mixtape about how his mother was his greatest example. she was a housewife, yes, but also the superhero he wanted to become. so when people reduce him to “chalant” or emotionally distant, it tells me you do not understand him even slightly.

none of us truly know him; he’s a celebrity, after all, but even from our tiny screens, some things are obvious.

while we’re here (and while i continue suspecting the gose editors of being lowkey meanie shippers), go watch everything from that white room ep part 2 again. after the var game ends, mingyu is the first one to point out that wonwoo didn’t do it.

these are the kinds of details people miss because they’re busy focusing on louder moments; like that infamous LA dry-humping video (min. please. behave).

but anyway.

suffice to say: judging someone’s love from our tiny little screens is incredibly easy.

only they themselves know the full shape of it.

this is to a wonwoo who guards his solitude like a fortress, yet lets mingyu cross its gates without question. to a mingyu so full of love it spills over the edges of everything he touches. to the two of them, who have seen each other at their lowest and continue loving each other regardless; because that is simply how their love exists.

i rest my case.