#why is stw like that. why is HYJ like that.
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hey remember what i said about thinking of a new and interesting way to ruin yoojin's life. au of the secret haunting au. i love ghosts i love talking about ghosts but i especially love when they're real
*
Han Yoohyun dies.
And then Han Yoohyun wakes up.
To screaming, to strangers' hands stretching out, to his brother with tears staining his cheeks and a glowing red stone in his palm--
Han Yoohyun wakes up, and he's in one of Haeyeon's reception rooms, his brother in front of him. "Hyung-?" he starts, already reaching out, eyes scanning him--no blood, no scars, no awkward stance to keep the weight off his bad leg--
There's a hand on his shoulder. He whips around, slapping the hand off--
It's Song Taewon.
Song Taewon is dead.
"You're dead too," Chief Song says, like he knows what Yoohyun's thinking. His voice is steady and firm, like he's giving a mission briefing. Not looking for a fight. Yoohyun grits his teeth and doesn't let himself relax. "We're ghosts, or something like it. It's a side effect of your brother's skills, as far as we can tell."
(The dragon's claws, ripping through him like scissors through paper. He can't remember the last time he felt that sort of pain, but he can remember thinking worth it.)
Yoohyun turns and stares at his brother. He looks--healthy, thank god, but he also looks... strangely young. "What's..." He frowns, glancing around. He knows this room. Didn't they replace these sofas? "How are we here?"
"A wishing item." Chief Song steps up beside him; out of the corner of his eye, he can see him studying hyung with a frown on his face. "He asked to go five years back in time with his memories."
A do-over? Hope swells inside Yoohyun, only to die just as fast, because-- "Hyung," he says again, loudly. Too loud.
His brother looks straight through him, a hollowness to his eyes.
"He can't hear you," a new voice whispers. Yoohyun glances over sharply to find the room crowded by strangers, except... He knows these faces. Aren't these hyung's old teammates? (A side effect of your brother's skills.) The one who must have spoken is near the front, staring at him. Her name slips his mind, but the brown hair and that sweater are distinct. She was among the earliest people hyung worked with, and if he's remembering the report right, she died in that very outfit.
Whatever her name is, she gives him a cautious glance before taking a slow step closer, peering at Yoojin as her mouth thins into a line. "He can't see you, either," she continues. "And you won't be able to touch him. Oppa's got no idea we're here."
Yoohyun thought so. He's clenching his teeth so tight his jaw aches, and he forces himself to relax, or at least enough to stop the hurting. "How long have you been watching?"
"Since we died," one of the others pipes up. Yoohyun vaguely recognizes him, too. (Hyung's friend, hyung's coworker, hyung's friend, hyung's friend, hyung's teammate, on and on... And Chief Song? whispers a tiny voice at the back of his mind.) The man shrugs. "Like Chief Song said. We're ghosts, right?"
Ghosts, or something like it. Yoohyun swallows. "And you've never been able to--"
That's when someone comes storming through the door, hyung's teammates hastily pulling out of his way. "Hyung," the intruder snaps, and Yoohyun bristles as he looks over (his hyung not yours not yours-!).
It's--him. It's Han Yoohyun.
"Dungeon brokers are--"
"Sorry," hyung says, and Yoohyun feels like shaking apart at the look in his brother's eyes when he gazes at the other-him. "I won't do it again."
Other-Yoohyun's brows furrow. Yoohyun realizes that on his face, surprise looks a lot like frustration. "If you've maybe gotten yourself in trouble-"
He keeps talking, but Yoohyun doesn't want to listen. Five years ago, Chief Song said. He knows the way he was talking to his brother five years ago.
He remembers exactly why he spoke to him that way, because it's the same reason he spoke to him that way just an hour or so ago. That doesn't stop him from wanting to put a fist through other-him's face when he sees the way hyung just takes it, the sheer lack of fury, of even just indignation. I was being immature, he's saying with a laugh, like it wasn't an hour ago that he threw his weapons aside and faced down a dragon and told Yoohyun I'll save you the trouble of holding a funeral--
He's not sure what sort of expression he's making, but by the way Song Taewon hisses "Han Yoohyun," and the other ghosts draw back, it must not be a very nice one.
Well. It's not like he cares about that sort of thing.
The tangled surge of emotions has his ears ringing, and so it's hard to hear what exactly other-Yoohyun says to their hyung before his brother suddenly steps forward and pulls him into a hug. Yoohyun steps forward, too, unable to stop himself. "Hyung," he whispers, strangled, and he isn't calm enough to hear properly again but he can see his brother's lips shape the words my brother, shape his name.
The next words cut clear through the ringing.
I love you.
There's arms wrapping around Yoohyun, and he shoves them away instinctively, pulling back with a snarl--
Hyung stares back, eyes wide with surprise and--a flicker of hurt that disappears a second later, replaced by blankness, and Yoohyun gasps, reaches out, and when he clutches at his brother's shoulders, his hands don't go through.
His hands don't go through.
(And you won't be able to touch him.)
"…Yoohyun-ah?" hyung asks, tentatively raising a hand before hesitating and going to drop it. Yoohyun instinctively grabs for it before he can lower it completely, wrapping his fingers around his brother's, and hold on, hold on, where's the stiffness in his fingers and the tightness of the skin at his wrist from old injuries and scars--?
Yoohyun slaps his other hand against his own face. Cheeks softer and rounder than he remembers, the line of his jaw not nearly harsh enough. Cold air against his forearms as he fumbles his way through the check; his forearms are bare--
His forearms are bare. He's in a T-shirt. The blood-soaked turtleneck, the rippling coat, they're- they're gone.
Hyung's still here.
"Hyung," he breathes, and yanks his brother back into another hug, tighter than before. Hyung lets out a muffled squawk, but he falls into the hold without a fight, clutching back at Yoohyun just as hard. Yoohyun buries his face in his brother's neck. "Hyung."
"Yoohyun-ah," hyung says, audibly bewildered. He reaches up and combs a hand through Yoohyun's hair. "What's- What happened? What's wrong?"
What's wrong? What's wrong? "You almost died," Yoohyun hisses. "You almost died, you would've died if I hadn't- You would've- You were going to--"
His voice rises as he keeps talking, and Yoohyun's fingers curl into his brother's shirt as he all but shouts- "Don't ever do that again!"
His voice cracks on the last word, and the next breath that escapes him comes out halfway to a sob, and his brother's hand has frozen in his hair, so Yoohyun raises his head to look at him--
Yoojin is staring back at him in undisguised horror. "What?" And then, a second later, eyes widening impossibly further: "You remember?"
#star.txt#you attempt to DIE? you attempt to give your life for me? oh!! oh!!!! confinement for hyung!! confinement for hyung for One Thousand Ye#yeah anyway after the shitstorm that is the resulting freakout yoohyun's like hey wait where'd chief song and the others go.#and yoojins like THE WHO? YOU'RE SEEING THE HATMAN NOW? and yoohyun's like no just your old teammates. they were hanging out.#they said you used a skill on them?? and yoojins like . now hold on a second. what.#please feel free to imagine the other side of this. where the ghosts are like oh jesus christ hyh's here with us n[hyh gets keyworded]#[ghost hyh disappears] HEY WHAT WHAT THE FUCK WHERE DID HE [alive hyh starts saying shit only ghost hyh can know] HEY WHAT THE F U C K#tl;dr. what if ghost au but one of hyj's old targets getting keyworded meant the ghost got merged into their living self.#my sranks#my sranks spoilers#<- presence of stw as always#han yoojin#han yoohyun#song taewon#choi yumi#i neither know nor care if this is ooc i wrote it exclusively as a warm up exercise for cached au prompt response#which is so. both the scene itself and having to Write it are making me weep and wail#why is stw like that. why is HYJ like that.
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WHY LIKE THAT
#tsctir#sctir#s classes that i raised#hyj#han yoojin#stw#song taewon#why would you carry him like that??#absolute lunatic#also I love the way this panel looks#it’s so dynamic and cute
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There is a lot happening right now, but the authorial decision to relay this to the reader by putting Song Taewon, Han Yoojin, and Sung Hyunjae alone in a room together had to have been The most chaotic way to go about it.
Case and point: Song Taewon heard 'possibility of double suicide' and didn't think twice. Sung Hyunjae is lovingly feeding them personally baked goods while nearly actually vibrating with the desire to absolutely murder both of them. Han Yoojin - the man who walked into this building prepared to blow it up with a bomb as an expression of disgruntlement - is currently the acting voice of reason as he desperately tries to referee this shit with a gun.
Some highlights:
SHJ: I'm still trying to decide if I should kill you.
HYJ: *oh free juice!* Officer Song, sit down please, he said he's still thinking about it.
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STW&SHJ: *very literary showdown scene, very dramatic**you who are better than I at stripping away the monster and swallowing it whole-* *pst use looting* *pst I got it*
HYJ, in background: *staring into camera like he's on the office are you seeing this shit*
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HYJ: You know you could die, right?
STW: I'm fine with that.
HYJ: Of course you are.
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HYJ: WILL YOU BOTH JUST SHUT UP NO ONE IS DYING THIS TIME
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STW:
STW: why
STW:
STW: why is there a child?
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HYJ: okay but hear me out...
HYJ: what if you could kill me?
#suicide tw#sctir spoilers#301-310#reading sctir mtl i don't know what's happening#this chapter is actually pretty hard to understand but I think I got the gist well enough#a lot of serious things got covered that I'm not fully touching on yet (prereg stw and shj holy shit)#but I think I need more context or a better translation before I really want to dive into that#the humor on the other hand...#also shj in an apron and the constant feeding of whoever will take food from him as all this plays out like why are they like this#this definitely gives some horror movie vibes to shj interactions before this and after the dungeon though#his fight with stw?#how long it took him to start to the point even stw noticed. his odd holding back in the first opening disguised as teasing#(testing himself?)#how quickly he left mid-fight#increasingly drifting into the background while in Japan#dancing around being alone with yoojin or even focusing on him too much#like we knew something was off but not THIS off#man's self control is through the roof
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how is shj barely stopping himself from violently killing hyj and stw, and hyj is armed to the teeth with all manner of bombs ready to explode shj into a billion pieces if he does act out, but the most pressed one on the room is stw. like I know why but you're not even the main murder victim-to-be so why
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character opinion bingo sung hyunjae pls homie
notes:
he does have a cool design. i gotta admit. the coat and the chains and the sunset palette in general
everyone but me is wrong about them <3/they got done DIRTY by fans/they're deeper than they seem: I STILL GET ROUTINELY PISSED OFF THINKING ABOUT THE REVIEWS AND POSTS GOING UGH SHJ IS SUCH AN ABUSIVE ASSHOLE WHY DO YOU ALL LIKE HIM SO MUCH. WELL MAYBE IF YOU KEPT READING YOU WOULD KNOW HE ACTUALLY IMPROVES AS PART OF HIS CHARACTER ARC. ASSHOLE
wow! he is a horrible person ^_^ if he was real i would attack him <3
yes i know. i contain multitudes.
i would've put down the handbag/technically canon squares except he really is doting housewifey in canon and also he would not go in my handbag because he would be carrying my bags for me with this expression -> ^^ (in a hypothetical scenario where i am hyj or stw and do not get immediately blown up and killed for this behaviour, naturally)
speaking of hyj and stw shj really is better when he's playing off them. they make him a better person. and also a funnier person
(send me a character to do bingo with!)
#i like to imagine he'd enjoy being hyjs pack mule if he could convince him to go on shopping sprees. with shj's money obviously#guy who likes doting soooo much#but yeah you cannot deny that his calling is to be a housewife just as much as you can't deny that he is a murder basement freak sicko#he too contains multitudes.#tempted to put down he got too much screen time but. sighs. i can't deny i enjoyed it#sranks is a challenging text and shj contributes like. at least 40% of that#my sranks#sung hyunjae#star.txt#answered#anonymous#or given that i know who you are should i just go ahead and tag#didi#adding 'if he was real i'd marry him' but only with the suffix 'to zmur'#re: the dynamics. as much as the homoeroticism and flirting and intricate rituals piss me off they are very funny#who else could make shj blow up a ship while they're both still on it
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Hi! I love your writing. I don't know if you like song recs, but a friend of mine pointed out how Brother by Madds Buckley is Yoohyun's song and now I can't stop thinking about it.
Do you have any songs you associate with the characters?
HMMM lets see!! I do have a few that remind me of some characters, some dynamics... let's see if I can remember them all—
HAN YOOJIN: nobody - mitski (this one's zmur's fault and she knows why); atlas: two - sleeping at last; to take for granted - jhariah, karma - ajr, 100 bad days - ajr, steady and stronger - shelby merry
HAN YOOHYUN: angel with a shotgun - the cab, gold - imagine dragons (pre reg), icarus - bastille
HAN BROTHERS: brother - kodaline, peace - O.A.R. (I know it's a love song but throw the romance part away. the vibes still hold), on top of the world - imagine dragons, if we have each other - alec benjamin
SUNG HYUNJAE: primadonna - marina (lol. lol), O.O - nmixx (ok this one isnt meaningful its. by accident. i was listening to this and thought "no one in their right mind would listen to this" which means people NOT in their right mind WOULD listen to this. hence. SHJ.), first time - twice (sorry not sorry for diagnosing him with girl groups. I'm right)
SPECIAL MENTION: PRE-REG SUNG HYUNJAE: let her go - passenger
JINJAE (han yoojin/sung hyunjae): if I'm being honest - dodie (the initial stages of romancing); intertwined - dodie (hyj @ shj); bad - christopher; outlaws - alessia cara; turning page - sleeping at last (shj @ hyj), symphony - clean bandit/zara larsson (shj @ hyj again), say you won't let go - james arthur
YOO MYEONGWOO: she - dodie
SONGSEONG (song taewon/sung hyunjae): bittersweet - panic at the disco (shj @ stw)
SONG TAEWON: karma - ajr (yeah again. both he and hyj are like this... sighs...)
and finally, less of a character song and more of a general story-in-general song, but gone, gone, gone and home, both by phillip phillips
#...i remembered a lot more than i thought i would LMAO#answered#anonymous#star.txt#listened to the madds buckley song and you are sooooooo right. yoohyuncore. also its a nice song!! thank you for telling me about it :D#my sranks#diagnoses yoohyun with manic burnout genre and ymw with breakup songs. love and light <3#sorry for all the jinjae songs but romance songs are so easy to find. comparatively. sighs#i do wish i had more stw and ymw songs... and the girls didn't get anything.......
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Hi! Just wanted to ask: when Song Taewon felt an abrupt sense of safety and when he said "Stronger is safer" to Hyunah, was that him being under Yoojin's influence? And was that Newcomer at the end? The chapter was awesome btw. It delivered not just a 10/10 Han bros softness content but also made Yoojin give off a Sung Jinwoo vibe (not sure if you know/like SL but just know that I mean this as a very high compliment in terms of coolness).
aha thank you! glad you liked han bros they are my favs to write ^_^ unfortunately I am not really a fan of comparisons of my writing/characterization to other characters...
"stronger is safer" is something stw has heard yoojin tell yoohyun before, yes! the reason he mentioned it was because stw noticed hyj unconsciously checking in on him with his tracker skill—after some time, if you're sensitive enough, you can kinda notice the very light brush of his mana against yours, and when stw felt it he was reminded of that conversation. that brushing is also why he felt that sense of safety back during their first meeting; it was very much a "checking everyone is where theyre supposed to be and doing okay" kind of thing, and that emotion came across a little, even if stw didn't recognize the skill usage for what it was back then. hyj didn't and has never actually taken over stw! he wouldn't do that unless it was an emergency situation and something was really really wrong, and probably not even then without stw's consent. in parts due to humans being too tricky to command, it's not worth the trouble and fallout he'd get for revealing he can puppet people, and also he just respects stw enough to not override him like that
thanks for reading and again I'm glad you liked it :DDD
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rambling thoughts about hyj (canon vs ywbk)
yoojin is so so fascinating as a character to me... i think about him 24/7 he occupies every available inch of brainspace i have. like this man and his issues am i fucking right. so i’m going to talk a bit about how i see him working and how i chose to portray him in my time travel series
so canon hyj, right. he’s like. he’s such a funky narrator. he’s like if i occupy my mind with endless work i will avoid falling into the pit of depression and immense grief from all that i went through pre regression. but also what i went through pre regression wasn’t even that bad. but also everyone who hurt me back then is assholes. but anyway ignore all that because i have work to do.
and on top of that the way he interacts with people is very... i won’t say it’s utilitarian but he’s very focused on what he can do for people and what they can do for him. in a currently-unpublished but translated chapter, he says that (SPOILERS!) he’s asked his thoughts on shj, and he answers that sung hyunjae is a useful man, and yoojin has to be polite to him on the off chance he needs to rely on him in the future. a very “he’s useful” kind of answer. this despite the obvious chemistry he and shj have-- not even in a romance way (though i do like jinjae), they just? get along? they banter easily and they have similar senses of humour and even though sometimes hyj gets exasperated at his behaviour, he still chats with him in a friendly way all the same.
and yet he’s also like SHJ Is Useful And That’s It. I Don’t Like Him At All. and he saves him in his contacts as “skill” and generally acts like he’s completely uncaring. which, compared to how much love he has for hyh and then for byr, i understand- shj at the moment quite honestly does not rank up there at all compared to those two? but he does rank somewhere, i think, because then hyj gets annoyed and upset when shj doesn’t show up to help him, and past a “shit, i needed his specific skillset for this situation and now i’m not sure how to manage this”, he does react in a very... i’ve been let down by someone i had high hopes for, kind of way.
so basically he’s got this whole, i don’t care about people1, thing going on, but then he also very much does care. and hyj is a caring person! fuck, shj even says to hyh at one point that han yoojin-gun has a bad habit of letting people into his heart too easily. what that tells me is that hyj has like.... SEVERE trust issues. he won’t allow himself to care about people, to be aware of any feelings he holds towards people- he makes himself only think about the skills people offer him, about how he can use them. and even then, whenever possible, he does things himself and he avoids relying on others, sometimes because he “doesnt want to bother them [with adult matters]” (that one talk with yoohyun) and sometimes because he just doesn’t really trust them with whatever needs doing
1. as an aside i do think hyj’s moral sense is very funny because like. if anyone touches his fucking kids they’re as good as dead! he’ll kill them! he cares about no one but his kids and everyone else can die! [the world is in danger] ah, fuck, maybe he cares about people who aren’t his kids. he doesn’t want the world to die. but don’t BRING IT UP!!! JEEZ!!! HIS PRIDE!!!! but also if you get blacklisted for whatever reason then Die literally Die he will kill you himself. it’s a very funny, he’s a good person but oh, he’s also a little bit insane, actually. that sort of situation. i love him. go crazy go stupid, sweetie, you’re doing great.
WHICH IN CONTEXT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE, WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT PRE REGRESSION! like hyj was raised with the experience of his parents, the people in the world whose unconditional support he was meant to have, being tossed down the drain because he chose to take care of yoohyun. so he’s already like, yeah, i gotta rely on myself. he has that understanding that.... he’s gotta rely on himself first and foremost, rather than trusting people who are supposed to be taking care of him. not just caring for him, actually, caring for him and yoohyun, because then he basically has to dedicate his life to yoohyun growing up. he’s been acting as yoohyun’s primary guardian from age Baby. and age 17 to 22 was literally just him dropping everything he was doing for himself in favor of getting a job and making sure yoohyun stayed in school and was fine. yoojin himself dropped out of school so he must’ve lost his whole friend group and support system. and then post-dungeon shock, he gets thrown aside and pretty much discarded by yoohyun without so much as a goodbye from the kid, which-- wow! ouch! that shit must have hurted! talk about being fucking burned, jeez. and even after that, spending three years running after yoohyun, trying to “regain” his trust and love, yoojin would’ve seen his Unawakened self as ‘not good enough’ for s-rank yoohyun. and therein comes the “if it’s not useful it’s worthless” mindset. and then he Awakened as f-rank-- already a blow!-- and then on top of that he gets backstabbed by the dozens of people who were like “you’re an s-rank’s brother! go get Awakened, i’ll bet money on you Awakening to a good rank!” and then pulled out on him, leaving him with idk how much debt (this is all mentioned in early chapters somewhere, i’ll pull citations later). man, i’m not surprised he has trust issues.
so that’s already part of his difficulty trusting other people. but then it gets compounded when you think about it further because like, His Fucking Skills, Man. he has a whole skill focused around “if you make an emotional connection with someone and then they die, it’s useful to you.” holy fuck! no wonder he’s allergic to bringing people into battle alongside himself! no wonder he throws himself into dungeons solo just to get freebie skills that allow him to be some semblance of independently combat-ready! every time he makes a connection with people he’s wondering if one day he’ll get their dying memories! you ever wonder how many people he had on his list of “keyworded individuals” pre-reg? he’s stated that he used to be at the back of dungeon parties with a spear (the need for weapons with a longer reach because of his low defense, obviously) and so someone else always died before he did? how many teammates that he cared about has he watched die in front of himself, how many times has he gotten the dying memories of those teammates, how many times have the rest of his living teammates turned on him after finding out his ability and accused him of getting the dead person killed on purpose so that he could have their skills? like hyj brings it up when he’s first explaining last repayment, and hyj cares about people so easily that he’d never do it and yet he still thought of it. which means other people would undoubtedly think of it very easily. and they wouldn’t be as forgiving when there’s a body count right there.
just, last repayment basically took hyj’s (largely yoohyun-induced) fear of losing the people he cared about and slammed his head directly into a concrete wall. thanks for that, king. so now hyj forces himself to constantly asses people on a “what skills do they have? how useful are they to me?” basis if they try to get close to him, rather than allowing him to just go “friend :-) i care them“. and it makes him reluctant to get close to and rely on people, because again, Danger Lies Therein
and all of this also must have made him be used to... being unloved, i guess (from his perspective- yoohyun cared, even when he left, but yoojin didn’t know that until yoohyun died). because most if not all of the people who have cared about or pretended to care about him have later left him. he’s got abandonment issues up the wazoo. when people say they care about him (stw, shj) he reacts with distrust. when he reveals the slightest imperfection he’s convinced they‘ll leave him, regardless of how much kindness he’s shown them in the meantime-- remember when he told myeongwoo he’d lied about them being childhood friends? complete confusion that myeongwoo didn’t immediately renounce their friendship. (SPOILERS FOR UNPUBLISHED CHAPTERS!) and later, it happens again with yerim- he tells her that he wasn’t actually a friend of her parents, he just wanted to poach her for haeyeon-- and then wonders why she doesn’t react with betrayal, when what she says is “i’m glad! ahjussi was so kind to me, i was worried i’d bewitched him somehow. i’m glad he actually cares about me. it makes me happy you were so kind”. he expects to lose the people he cares about, if not by outside causes, then of their own volition.
though on the outside causes front, i suppose it does help that like, all the people he’s growing close to now are hypercompetent high-rankers and therefore less likely to get themselves hurt. versus last timeline’s f-rank and e-rank friends, who’d probably routinely get killed, rip. but then there lies the possibility of yoojin thinking “if i pull them into danger then they’re in that much more danger” (see: Literally The Whole Reason Pre-reg Yoohyun Died. he went to help hyj and got in over his head trying to defend hyj and keep hyung alive, when he should’ve been able to defend himself with ease. hyj and diarma both acknowledge this.) which, again, plays into the reason he tries to avoid relying on other people.
tl;dr hyj’s interpersonal relationships are fucked!
but anyways moving on to talk about my fic versions of canon yoojin (hyj): han hyunjae (hhj) and han yoojin jr. (hyj jr). and how i’ve given them both problems disorders based on hyj’s issues
so like right off the bat we have hhj’s major issue, repeatedly brought up in-fic-- his issue with relying on people. let me pull a quote about this from the author notes of ywbk chapter 11:
some of you might be wondering why the yoojins are so [pretends to be okay and centers self on taking care of others], particularly [hhj]. my thinking for that part was mostly... in canon we see yoojin surrounded by people he knows are competent and capable, almost all of them adults. even when he's "raising" them, he has some degree of confidence in their ability to watch out for themselves. plus he's had time to grow out of being the only one in charge of the family; he's seen his brother come into his own and he's pulled back from his caretaking role
but here, [hhj]'s been directly thrust into raising two kids (and yeah even if [hyj jr]'s 18 he's still very much a child). not only that, but his knowledge of the future makes him (in his eyes) more knowledgable than just about all the folks around him, even the adults. mostly, he doesn't want to drop all his baggage on them when he knows they won't be able to relate (and in some cases, he doesn't want them to live with that knowledge). so he kind of distanced himself from everyone and pushed himself further into the caretaking thing as a way of coping, without realizing that's what he was doing.
we have hhj who, as hyj’s au twin, has the same trust issues and forced utilitarian attitude rising from pre-reg experiences. and then we dropped him into a situation where that “prioritize work and handle all issues myself” attitude is-- i don’t want to say rewarded, exactly, but it’s definitely useful for him in the timeline he’s in. he’s the oldest han brother, so handling issues naturally falls to him anyway as the head of the family; with both boys in school, he’s the breadwinner of the family, so prioritizing work is good! he becomes a super-efficient worker and it satisfies the needs of everyone around him!
unfortunately yoojin is a caring person, so hyj jr realizes that hhj is very much overreaching when he’s not even begun to address the effects of the Very Obvious In A Non-Dungeon World pre-reg trauma. so he’s like. hyung. what the FUCK, dude. take it easy and rely on people once in a while.
and physically, sure, hhj can rely on them. he can get yoohyun to do chores, he can get junior to take on a part time job so funds aren’t a constant worry. he gets better at trusting them to manage regular life stuff, honestly! he’s pretty good about that sort of thing now!
but then it comes to emotional needs, and like, hyj jr is a kid? and hyh is a kid? so any trust hhj builds there is going to be a little one-sided, since he can’t dump all his emotional worries on children. whatever yoojin is, he is a good caretaker who addresses his kids’ needs, and the kids do not need to be hhj’s therapists.
and hhj doesn’t really have friends his own age, and even when he does (hello jiyeon and hamin and orv gang), none of them can quite- Get it, because there’s not really an easy way to explain “i have deep-seated trauma about my family leaving me and about the people around me dying brutally” without, uh, (a) a LOT of trusting them to take you seriously and not snitch (b) explaining some Context about his youth and also the dungeons. (like yeah he could say “i’m scared everyone i care about will die on me in horrifying ways, particularly if they try to get close to me”, but that’s an irrational fear (because why would everyone die horrifyingly, why would getting close to hhj be a death sentence)-- unless you know that “everyone i care about” consists of Hunters and getting close to hhj involves getting involved with dungeons, and then his fear is very real and very understandable, even without knowing about pre-reg. there’s a reason why, even though hhj had four years to grow close to jiyeon, it still took the dungeon shock occurring for him to finally tell her even the smallest bit about pre-regression.
(from jiyeon’s perspective, she doesn’t notice much amiss, because the things hhj is keeping from her are mostly pre-reg related. he doesn’t mind talking to her about his current life, though he is reluctant to talk about some personal issues with her. hamin is a little more distant, because he is still hhj’s boss, so hhj tries to stay mostly cordial with him. orv gang is a more casual relationship- not really the type where he can dump his personal issues on them; and anyway, they’re a tight-knit friend group themselves, so hhj feels a little more on the fringes, not excluded but not fully included, either. a little like hsy does, but without the whole “i have to play the bad guy of the team” mindset.)
and this distance he creates without anyone realizing, this inability of his to fully trust them with all the details of his life, is what results in the freakout around the dungeon shock. the whole, You Are Actively Dying, if you don’t explain yourself right now i’ll finish the job. (though i don’t blame him for not trusting them with his trauma! i don’t really think he’s ready to talk about it. especially with people who don’t yet have any context for even the start of the story. hopefully this’ll change post-dungeon shock, though.)
unfortunately even with his newfound ability to talk about things more freely, he’s still in a sticky situation-- over the years, he’s developed his ability to rely on people for non-life-and-death situations like “earn money on the side”. but sending his brother to take out the trash is very very different from sending his brother to fight dungeons and other Hunters without backup. is very different from needing to risk a life and choosing his brother’s. so despite his hard-won Relying On Others abilities, they don’t extend to dungeon world situations.
and what does this mean, practically? it means, like canon hyj, hhj is going to persistently overreach himself in trying to fight alone-- he’ll try to be competent, to take on adversaries, to build strength in every possible avenue so that he can keep yoohyun and hyj jr and the rest of his family out of danger. he’ll try to be a one-man army, just to defend the people he cares about.
(ONE DAY. one day he will learn that it may not be safe to care, he may still be hurt, but that doesn’t mean he should cut himself off in advance. he’s still allowed to care. he’s still allowed to be cared about. oh, hhj. i want to beat him up but more than that i want to hug him.)
and then there’s hyj jr. oh, junior, you’re a delight. i love the concept of a yoojin who’s never had the trauma of being left behind by yoohyun, who’s gotten to flourish and become everything he has the potential to be, fighting at yoohyun’s side and being amazing. it’s too bad the method i chose to achieve this through also left our prodigal son with extreme issues.
(FAIR WARNING: THIS PART WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR LATER PARTS OF YWBK VIS A VIS SOME CHARACTER DECISIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS. mostly since hyj’s time to shine hasn’t come through quite yet, so we don’t have as much of him)
so our boy junior may not have the various traumas induced by pre-regression, but he does start off with the same parental neglect that makes him hesitant to rely on seniors. and when his parents die, it’s about a week or so before hhj shows up, which junior spends realizing that he’s really going to have to give up his life and completely dedicate himself to guardianship, huh? and then hhj appears, and rips that role out from under him-- not just the “head of the family” role, even the “primary guardian of yoohyun” role. because yoohyun trusts him instinctively, and looks to him with just as much respect as hyj jr. junior becomes desperate to regain that role he’s lived all his life, in whatever form he can, resulting in the chapter 11 blowup. and past me already covered this:
as for junior, he's suddenly gained a new brother out of nowhere who is demonstrably bad at taking care of himself; on top of that, the "head of house + reliable caretaker" role junior's played almost all his life has been stolen out from under his nose without his realizing, and he's not really been able to adjust to suddenly being made to depend on yoojin (and, to a degree, jiyeon). yeah it helps a bit that yoojin's his elder self but even so. so he's attempting to re-assert himself in the role he's familiar with, particularly now that he's due to [go to mandatory service and] not see any of these people for months
he’s trying to figure out where he fits in this new family setup, trying to figure out what he can do for his family. and he would’ve started out on a track similar to hhj, trying to be everything for his family, except then the dungeons start appearing.
and what does hhj reveal? that hyj jr is destined to be an f-rank. that most of the useful skills hhj has, the hard-won power that he has, it’s all earned from other places that hyj jr won’t be able to replicate, most likely. and hyh-- hyh is going to be the pride of the family, as always. s-rank, top of the nation, worldwide hero, peerless and amazing.
hyj jr starts feeling like he’s falling behind. he starts feeling a lot of pressure to keep up. as the dungeon shock hits, he decides he’s going to keep up, one way or another.
and then there’s the aftermath of the shock, and all hyj jr can do is- is sit in the hospital room and wait for hhj to be okay. there’s monsters on the streets, yoohyun is out there killing them and making a difference, and all hyj jr is doing is sitting around. all he can do is offer yoohyun emotional support when he gets back, all he can do is keep jiyeon sane when she calls for daily checkins, all he can do is wait for the nurses to check that hhj is still alive. all he can do is support the people around him without actually acting out himself.
all that determination he had during the shock doesn’t get killed by the realization that he can’t actually do much, with his strengths; by the realization that he can’t be a one-man army like hyung is, sometimes. he decides, instead, that he’s got his handful of things he can do, so obviously the only path left is to do them perfectly.
he throws himself into learning to fight; he throws himself into playing support whenever possible (though allowances are made for being bratty, sometimes, the remaining anxiety from the aftermath of the shock leading to him acting out); he throws himself into working for haeyeon, to the point of becoming the deputy guild leader. he throws himself into perfection so hard that he takes the slightest failure to meet his sky-high expectations hard. (”Why can’t i fight high-ranks without being afraid like hyung can,” says local E-rank without his hyung’s L-rank Fear Resistance) because he only needs to be good at these few things, he can’t do anything other than these few things, so why can’t he at least do this perfect, y’know? why can’t he keep up with his family? why is he never good enough?
(what if he gets left behind again for not being good the way they want him to be? he’d only wanted to take care of yoohyun, and look where that got them.)
so basically, hyj jr winds up with the same Need To Be Enough that hhj has-- but where hhj needs to be able to do Everything, hyj jr needs to be able to do Perfectly at his (self-assigned) Roles. where hhj wants to do whatever he decides needs doing, hyj jr has no illusions about his abilities; he knows he can only be the supportive brother, the hard-working guild leader, the caring friend, the perfect whatever. everything else is something he won’t dare to try for, because he Knows he’ll never be enough. and if he ever fails even slightly at the things he can do, it’s an instant game over, anyway.
congrats, junior, you’ve given yourself clinical anxiety!
but yeah, that’s. yoojins.
#star.txt#hyj let me study you [hand emojis]#my first exam is tomorrow and yet i wrote an essay for an hour and a half. time to do statistics now#i don't claim to be good at character meta. but i will still write it.#ugh i guess i should tag this with the fandom tags#han yoojin#my sranks#work: yesterday will be kinder
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