ramble

[soobun]

anyone who i would usually talk to about this is asleep so it’s going here. i love ficdom so much but sometimes it makes me feel crazy!!!!! i can't believe i've been in this shit for over 10 years. jesus. but man i love fandom and community and seeing people's interpretations and discussing headcanons, especially when it's evidence based. it makes me sad when people are close-minded! i've had my headcanons totally shifted after talking to people, or reading certain fics. i don’t think the stuff i write is particularly groundbreaking - it’s often self-indulgent and pretty personal, and i know i have biases that affect the way i portray these characters (everyone does, if you say you don’t then you’re lying) but i do genuinely try really hard to get them right. for ncej specifically, especially in the canon compliant stuff, i can usually point to a specific piece of content that has influenced whatever characterization decision i’ve made, though ofc sometimes its more vibes based, and in a sexual dynamic context it obviously takes a few more leaps.

and then i also understand that a lot of the joy in writing fanfiction is ~extrapolating~ on canon, on maybe pushing the personas we see irl a little bit to the left. ie euijoo’s kind leader persona - we sometimes see him snippy with nico, more forceful and sharp than usual. maybe we can extrapolate that, internally, he sees what he does to bleeding_heart nico, maybe he likes it, the control and thus maybe the power. so then someone might think: okay, dom euijoo. (i even wrote this a little bit in my a/b/o fic!) for me, though, i’m always trying to make sure it doesn’t veer into caricature. can i see euijoo in a dominant role? sure, in the right context, absolutely. (same for nico!) do i think it requires a little bit of a mental leap? maybe some elaboration? yeah! but its not hard to make that compelling.

euijoo’s main traits (to me!) are his composure (aka 차분함 the korean word he used to describe himself recently) which ties into his rigid sense of self-control & his constant awareness and thoughtfulness, which also ties into the above, and how those two very responsible traits intermingle with his generally kind and often lazy and even playful demeanor. he has a lot going on, and i struggle sometimes with the balance: am i making him too kind? too passive, even too submissive? in the opposite direction, then, am i making him too sharp and mean? way too deep in his own head? he’s said multiple times that he struggles with overthinking (it’s also blatantly obvious if you watch him in pretty much anything for longer than 10 minutes but i digress) but maybe i focus on it too much? how do you reconcile a real life person’s disparate personality traits into a character that you’re writing a story about? people answer this question very differently, depending on what you’re hoping to get out of your work. sometimes its less about the character and more about the story. it’s never like that for me, but i can understand it.

and i have the same characterization questions running through my head re: nico too, actually usually a lot more than i do for euijoo bc, while i do think nico’s personality is generally simpler to write about, he has a lot of those same contradictions. am i making him too much of pushover, too willing to acquiesce to euijoo’s whims? too sweet? too emotional, too open? its difficult narratively because you often want two characters to foil each other ie nico’s openness to euijoo’s reserve, especially in an opposites_attract sort of pairing like ncej, but then sometimes this desire to make them disparate characters leads to some characterization foibles, falling into easy tropes. euijoo’s said it himself: they’re more alike than people think.

so obviously at the end of the day you have to - sort of - pick and choose the traits that work for the narrative, but i guess my point is that even if you lean in one direction (we could say jjuneko with a more domineering euijoo, or nikjju with an overly accommodating nico) it’s important for me to remember the other sides of their personalities, too, and not let things veer into the one-dimensional. i honestly don’t think either of them are particularly submissive, OR dominant for that matter, but what’s important to ME is that whatever i’m writing fits their characters & often is doing something thematically. sort of like this (keep in mind this is all in a ncej context, i view their dynamix with kuma pretty differently):

- euijoo being dominant/”active”/”left” is an understandable extrapolation of his need for control and self-possession. it’s not as vulnerable, and i think he enjoys giving nico what he wants - i also think he's used to denying himself, so nico goading him into losing control in this context is very compelling & very possible. and in a more shallow sense, he’s taller and (sometimes) larger.

- nico being dominant/active/”left” is an equally understandable extrapolation of his easy self-confidence (this is different from euijoo’s self-possession, it’s composure vs ease, they manifest differently) and his general forwardness & willingness to Use His Words compared to euijoo, lol. i really don’t think he would mind taking the reins. and then in the shallow sense, he has range and his build varies a lot, but he’s generally wider and puts on a lot more muscle than euijoo.

- euijoo being submissive/passive/”right” is, to me, most interesting when it comes in the context of him Giving Himself Up - someone whose key character trait is his composure being forced to lose control? to be at someone elses mercy? delightful! i think it might take a while for euijoo to be comfortable enough to let it happen, but nico has a great gentle teasing physicality with him, and he likes seeing euijoo unravel (we see this desire in him constantly in more PG contexts) i think there’s a lot of canon evidence for this & its a personal favorite of mine. and physically euijoo’s pretty delicate, fine-boned, etc. despite his height.

- nico being submissive/passive/”right” is a common interpretation and i can see it - he’s open & emotional & doesn’t have many qualms about being a little bratty (said fondly) to get what he wants. it’s more difficult for me to see him, uh, lying there and taking it, for lack of a better term, especially because i don’t think euijoo would be rough without (as i said above) a lot of goading, but if he pushes euijoo to that point? then i’m very compelled & happy to see the cat get railed. he deserves it, and physically he’s lithe and often a little slutty (again for lack of a better word).

all of this to say that i don’t think their dynamic would be particularly d/s heavy but all of this is fake anyway so who cares. i think they’re switch-y and there would be a lot of give and take. mainly i wrote this up to try and explain (mostly to myself) how, when you have a strong character basis to go off of, pretty much any dynamic can Work.

reading this back and why am i lowkey giving this (the funniest ao3 comment exchange of all time)



it's fine. i have more to say but this is enough. aaaaand post