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geguriA couple days ago, I received a very lovely message on CuriousCat, and in their message, they also asked why I ship SoonWoo. This is something I've been mulling over for awhile, and to be honest, I always struggle with fully encapsulating my thoughts on this because I find that I want to say so much and each attempt I make at externalizing my thoughts leads me to chaotic circles with no end in sight.
And so this is my first attempt of capturing some of the main reasons why I am drawn to SoonWoo. This post can also be read as the main pillars of how I perceive and write SoonWoo, just because my reasons for liking them are entangled with how I write them. These pillars are organized under five keywords: peripheries, knowledge, perseverance, reciprocity, and intention.
I have to warn you that this is a work-in-progress, and much of the base thinking for a lot of this is born out of continued conversations with friends. I did not include citations for everything I reference. Maybe once I flesh out these thoughts further, I can revisit this and eventually flush this out further. For now, please bear with my barely cohesive and half-formed thoughts!
1. Peripheries
“Even when I look away I am still looking.” — Richard Siken, from Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light.
—
I always joke to my friends that feeling emotionally invested in Soonyoung and Wonwoo means that you're constantly looking in the peripheries of the camera. You'll catch them at their best when they're unaware of the audience, unconscious of the camera's eyes on them. Another friend of mine, Ju (noctrl_01), jokes that Soonyoung and Wonwoo in reality is the slowest burn fic of them all because there's so much that we will never see from them, simply because it is not for us to see. I don't even mean that as an implication of a supposed romance in real life, I just mean that in their friendship in general.
But, personally, I think that it's in those tiny moments of looking into the peripheries that we find some of most telling moments of SoonWoo instead.
If you know me, you'll know that one of my favourite themes are the unspoken gestures of love found in ordinary, simple, mundane things. You'll find Soonyoung and Wonwoo in the little details that will go unnoticed. Here are some of my favourites:
In the periphery of all these moments from Soonyoung and Wonwoo, we see these glimpses of ease, familiarity, comfort that's shared between the two of them. And sometimes, within the margin of their interactions, we see the traces of things that have been left unsaid—perhaps between them, perhaps only to the public, and left for the private moments between them. It is within these moments that I think about how much Soonyoung and Wonwoo are looking at each other, even when they're not. How much they see each other, even when they're turned away, or they're silent. How much is revealed in these gaps and spaces that they fill for each other—or leave unfilled.
The list above is not all-encompassing, and in fact, it shows so little of what I feel and what they likely share with each other. Regardless, there is a wealth of love that can be found in the depths of their silences, written in to the margins of their interactions.
These silences are for Soonyoung and Wonwoo to keep. As a writer? Well, that's the generative potential of fic writing, isn't it? But that's not everything, either. In the next few paragraphs, I want to talk about what moments we do get to bear witness, and where it draws me towards.
2. Knowledge
"I also learned the word dendrochronology—analyzing the patterns of tree rings to know everything that has ever happened to a tree. This is how I love you. I am peeling back my skin, layer by layer, so you will finally know everything inside me." — Roxane Gay, from Strange Gods
—
I find that I am always inexorably drawn to friendships. Perhaps more important to me than any romantic connection, is the love inherent to friendships. Deep, emotional connections and the mutual desire to nourish and nurture the little threads within a friendship that you weave together into a wonderful, beautiful tapestry of all these memories, these histories, stories, the present and future between you and one other person—or two, or three, or however many are part of this friendship.
Some of this attachment to friendships is drawn from my own experiences as a lesbian. The desire to form chosen families, to find love and richness in your bonds with those who you find kinship with. The desire to subvert heteronormative notions of the nuclear family and belonging. The solidarity of entrenching yourself in a community, although the notion of community is always troubled and complicated if you base it purely on identity. These families are not without hurt, too. It would be foolish for me to remain remiss on that.
But back to the point: I am in love with friendships. I am enamoured with exploring emotional sustenance that is found in the fostering of love and understanding within a friendship. And with Soonyoung and Wonwoo? They know each other. They know. Since 2013, Wonwoo and Soonyoung have iterated over and over again that they are each other's best friends.
What does it mean to "know each other best"? What does it mean for Wonwoo to reiterate this as an objective truth over and over again? What does it mean to be able to say this with confidence, that it's not just Wonwoo who knows Soonyoung, but that "we"—together, the two of them—know each other. It's not lost on me either that Wonwoo always uses superlatives when he's talking about Soonyoung. He's his "best" friend, the one who knows him "most," they know each other the "best," the person he spends the "most" time with.
In all the ways that Wonwoo and Soonyoung talk about each other, and particularly with Wonwoo, the undeniable reality is that their love have been carved out through years of time spent learning about each other, knowing each other. There's a note of pride whenever Wonwoo talks about how much Soonyoung knows him and vice versa. Under the foundations of their relationship with each other, we can always find this value, this significance they hold one another in relation to themselves. And this, to me, is the type of love that I am in love with.
There's an inherent vulnerability in the intimacy found in knowing someone. Really, really knowing someone, for all their flaws, their anxieties, their hopes and dreams. Knowing someone comes with time, it comes with history, and more than that, it comes with the desire to know. To discover one another, even in the midst of discovering yourself and who you are. The alchemy of friendship may be incidental, the meeting of one another may be luck, but like all relationships, to nurture a bond with one other person to the degree of which you can comfortably state that you know each other best takes effort, choice, and desire. And in the personal archives of their own memories, Soonyoung and Wonwoo have carved a space for each other inside of themselves.
3. Perseverance
"'I suppose you do love me, in your way,' I said to him one night close to dawn when we lay on the narrow bed. 'And how else should I love you—in your way?' he asked. I am still thinking about that'" — Anne Carson, from The Anthropology of Water
—
The funny thing about collecting quotes said by Wonwoo and Soonyoung is that you start to be able to draw parallels, overlaps, adjacencies in themes of what they actually say. Sometimes about each other, often not. If there's one clear theme I've noticed, it's the value that both Wonwoo and Soonyoung have placed on perseverance, persistency, effort. And more specifically, that no matter how long it may take or how slow the progress may be, that it's still worth it to persevere.
I think of perseverance in relation to Wonwoo and Soonyoung together a lot as well. It's found in their endurance throughout the hardships of idol training and the idol industry, in the sustainability of their friendship, having lasted so strong for more than a decade, and most of all, I like to think of it as their persistence of effort they reserve for each other. Friendships take work—and while I don't think it should be hard, not all the time at least and not more than it brings you joy—it does take persistence and effort. And for two people who have different modes of communication, different hobbies, different interests, I am fascinated by the perseverance of a friendship as strong as theirs. More than anything, I am interested in the ways they have met in the middle.
In previous conversations, CuriousCat responses, and tweets, I have glanced upon Soonyoung and Wonwoo's love languages. I have written a longer post that encompasses my thoughts on Soonyoung specifically, but have yet to complete Wonwoo's outside of an initial draft. Similarly, I've written a CC response that talks about my thoughts on gaming. I want to write full post on it with my thoughts a little more cohesively strung together than my original response, but this is where my mind turns to when I think about how two people with different modes of communication can express their love in a way that the other person understands.
In the most angst-ridden iterations of perseverance, I think of them as two people who write love letters to one another, but in languages that the other person does not understand. Both Soonyoung and Wonwoo have stated at different points throughout the years that neither of them are very comfortable with the words "I love you." I think of this, and then I think of the enormity of love and all the ways it can be expressed and delivered, but also how it can be incommunicable. In this angst-ridden version of Soonyoung and Wonwoo, they are two people who would be afraid to say these words for a very, very long time—and perhaps even longer, not knowing how to understand all the invisible ways that they are individually saying "I love you" to the other person. If they aren't saying this in a language that they both communicate in, how is the other person understanding it?
With all that being said, I think Soonyoung and Wonwoo do, in fact, learn how to communicate with each other. It's in how Wonwoo says that they know how to talk well with each other, it's in how Wonwoo said on Weverse that even it's important to be open with your feelings even if it's hard or if you feel shy, it's in how Soonyoung responded and said "say [your] feelings to me 🥰." And I know I keep harping on this, but the most striking example to me is in Wonwoo's hobby in gaming and how it demonstrates how the two of them have navigated mismatched means of communication (preliminary thoughts can be found in a mini-thread here). I have so much more to say on this now that Soonyoung showed up on Wonwoo's Huya Live (and if we've spoken in DMs, you probably already know of them), but I hope to write that in another post too.
I don't think that these have been necessarily compromises on either of their parts. "Compromise" feels like an insinuation of sacrifice; Soonyoung and Wonwoo aren't sacrificing parts of themselves, but instead, choosing to grow together in a way where they meet together in a space they carve for themselves.
And to me, this is what draws me to them as a ship the most. The perseverance of loving someone, so wholly and fundamentally, that you learn two languages: how to love them in the way you know, and how to love them in the way they know too.
4. Reciprocities
"For every interaction between things, there is always a pair of oppositely directed forces that are equal in strength. If you push hard on the world, for example, the world pushes hard on you. If you touch the world gently, the world will touch you gently in return. The way you touch others is the way others touch you." — from an Untitled Physics Textbook
—
Neither knowledge nor perseverance can be sustained if not for reciprocity. The concept of reciprocity is absolutely vital in how I think through relationships and connections—both of my own, but also in why I ship Soonyoung and Wonwoo.
In some ways, I think the level of reciprocity between the two of them is at times overlooked. For those who aren't as familiar with Soonyoung and Wonwoo's friendship, they may be inclined to dismiss Soonyoung as overbearing, too loud, too energetic, too much for a tsundere, quiet Wonwoo who pushes him away when he tries to hug him during concerts. On the flip side, for those who notice Wonwoo's constant attempts to capture Soonyoung's attention by annoying him, teasing him, biting him, or his Fondgazing Crimes, they may veer in the opposite direction and say that Soonyoung doesn't return the same level of affection.
I said this as a joke to Cat (historiologies) earlier today, but it's partly my mission to denounce the idea that Soonyoung doesn't return Wonwoo's affection. Taking this outside the realm of shipping, I mean it in a purely platonic friendship sense too. Soonyoung does reciprocate. He does show care. But Soonyoung, when it comes to his friendships and especially when it comes to Wonwoo, is a lot more private than you initially guess (again, I know I keep making reference to this but I swear one day I'll expand on this more). And with it, you have to read between the lines.
Returning once again to my thoughts on gaming, it's in how Soonyoung doesn't know anything about games and doesn't have interest in games, but still asked Wonwoo to teach him how to play. It's in how Soonyoung tells us that Wonwoo likes it when people take interest in his interests—and then shows us indirectly that that's exactly what Soonyoung has tried to do for Wonwoo. It's in how Soonyoung, who in the same breath as telling us that he's never even played PUBG once, cheers Wonwoo on and says "if it's Wonwoo, then we'll surely get chicken tonight" (and how did Soonyoung know that the victory screen for PUBG has the words "winner winner chicken dinner" if he hasn't been paying attention to Wonwoo playing PUBG? Soonyoung makes specific reference to something that you wouldn't know about the game unless you have paid attention to the details of its gameplay in some capacity).
It's also in how Wonwoo has talked about his own concerns about being boring, too ordinary, that he's not funny enough; once on Hit the Road, another time in an older variety show (maybe OFD1?)—and Soonyoung immediately rebutted and told him that he's funny just the way he is. It's in how Wonwoo says the words: "he [Soonyoung] understands me." It's in how Wonwoo apologizes on Weverse for "lacking" the vocabulary to express himself well, and Soonyoung immediately replies and assures him that "you [Wonwoo] are not lacking, I think you're really cool."
It's Soonyoung who never forgets to remind us that Wonwoo is "irreplaceable," (Seventeen Meets Seventeen Magazine, 2018), that he's "a gentle person" and (Carat Magazine, 2020), that he's "surprisingly affectionate" (Caratland Memory Book, 2018), that he's "a very warm person inside" (Carat Magazine, 2020). And if you notice them in interviews, more often than not, they are encouraging each other in subtle ways. They're always the first one to laugh at each other's jokes (here's a brief compilation with no subs), to hype up each other's comments, and when they do tease? It's never meanspirited. They never put each other down—and in fact, Wonwoo is the only member I can think of who has insisted that Soonyoung is smart (even though it's sometimes masked as a joke) on three different occasions.
For all that Wonwoo sees himself as someone who isn't enough, I think Soonyoung has always made it clear to Wonwoo that is not lacking. He holds Wonwoo with such warmth and affection, and even in the opportunities to snipe at each other, they always speak to each other with such fondness. And whenever Soonyoung does have the opportunity to remind everyone of Wonwoo's gentleness, he does. The way they treat each other is gentle and filled with warmth, and if you focus on them during Vlives or interviews together, you'll notice this.
They care for each other. They really do. Wonwoo wouldn't say "we know each other best" if it wasn't reciprocated, returned in full by Soonyoung, and felt by Wonwoo himself. And of course, vice versa.
5. Intention
"I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way." — Kiersten White, from The Chaos of Stars
—
Choosing to learn and know someone, to persevere with them, to reciprocate with your heart—they all take intention. In the end, this is one of the themes that matter most to me, and is a theme that you'll find in most of my writing. It feels gauche to reference my own works, but I wrote this line in jump, stunt, and tumble:
"It’s easy to talk to Wonwoo and get lost in his small smiles, his deep voice, the quiet jokes and banter in between period breaks. It’s even easier to fall in love with him.
It’s a choice Soonyoung makes over and over again. To choose to love."
Knowing someone and having a whole library's worth of history with someone means that you don't only know the best part of them, but the worst too. You witness them during the hardest parts of living, and you're there with them, holding their hands takes intention. To know someone—to really know, in all the ways that count—takes intention.
Learning to speak someone's language and how to communicate in your own takes intention. You choose to continue loving them, even with all your knowledge and vulnerabilities that flay you to your barest bones. To persevere with one another, for one another, takes intention.
To not only let their love fill you up, but to fill your love in them with equal measures takes intention.
I don't have a lot more to say that I haven't said before. Intentionality threads through their choice to love for each other, in all the ways they've learned to love to each other. And I think there is something very, very powerful in saying "On purpose, I will care for you. On purpose, I love you."
Soonyoung and Wonwoo hold love and care for each other. On purpose.
Last thoughts:
If you actually read this entire post, once again, I really have to thank you for taking the time to do so. I know this was one big ramble, but I wanted to try capturing some of my thoughts on what draws me to SoonWoo as a ship, and what I tend to extract from them myself as well. This is, of course, entirely subjective! I have no interest in pretending to have any authority on the ship, or on Soonyoung or Wonwoo as individuals, and I am fully aware that I'm playing around in the realm of interpretation and fiction. But, well, this is part of the fun of writing those funny little fanned fictions, right?
I hope, regardless of how much of my own reflections resonated with you, that this was a fun read! Thank you for staying with me, and if you have any thoughts, I would absolutely love to hear them.
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And so this is my first attempt of capturing some of the main reasons why I am drawn to SoonWoo. This post can also be read as the main pillars of how I perceive and write SoonWoo, just because my reasons for liking them are entangled with how I write them. These pillars are organized under five keywords: peripheries, knowledge, perseverance, reciprocity, and intention.
I have to warn you that this is a work-in-progress, and much of the base thinking for a lot of this is born out of continued conversations with friends. I did not include citations for everything I reference. Maybe once I flesh out these thoughts further, I can revisit this and eventually flush this out further. For now, please bear with my barely cohesive and half-formed thoughts!
1. Peripheries
“Even when I look away I am still looking.” — Richard Siken, from Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light.
I always joke to my friends that feeling emotionally invested in Soonyoung and Wonwoo means that you're constantly looking in the peripheries of the camera. You'll catch them at their best when they're unaware of the audience, unconscious of the camera's eyes on them. Another friend of mine, Ju (
noctrl_01), jokes that Soonyoung and Wonwoo in reality is the slowest burn fic of them all because there's so much that we will never see from them, simply because it is not for us to see. I don't even mean that as an implication of a supposed romance in real life, I just mean that in their friendship in general. But, personally, I think that it's in those tiny moments of looking into the peripheries that we find some of most telling moments of SoonWoo instead.
If you know me, you'll know that one of my favourite themes are the unspoken gestures of love found in ordinary, simple, mundane things. You'll find Soonyoung and Wonwoo in the little details that will go unnoticed. Here are some of my favourites:
- In the bungee jumping episode, Soonyoung asks Wonwoo to hold his phone when he goes up to jump.
- When they were on their Ode to You tour, the only times Wonwoo shows up on Vlive (when it wasn't a full group post-concert Vlive) are when it's Hoshi's Vlive and he's just chilling in his hotel room.
- 9 times out of 10, if they're sitting next to each other on Vlive, they end up whispering to each other or getting lost in their own inside jokes. There have been more than one occasion where they have been scolded by someone for this.
- Once when they were travelling overseas for a schedule, there was a 30 second clip where Soonyoung wanted a bite of Wonwoo's ramyeon. Wonwoo says that it's tastes fine for himself, but tells Soonyoung that it'll be too spicy. He lets Soonyoung eat some of it anyway. Wonwoo's right. It's too spicy for Soonyoung.
- When Soonyoung was talking about a song that he really liked (it was a SVT song, but I forget which), Wonwoo chimed in and said "that's right, you have been listening to this in your hotel room everyday." They have never once been roommates, and yet Wonwoo knows what Soonyoung listens to in his room. Everyday.
- During a Japanese variety show, members were calling Soonyoung "indecisive." Quietly to himself, Wonwoo remarks that that's not the Soonyoung he knows.
- Soonyoung runs hot and Wonwoo runs cold (literally, as in their body temperatures). On at least four different occasions, we have seen Wonwoo silently holding up a fan to cool Soonyoung down, or wiping off his sweat himself. In contrast, we have seen Soonyoung rubbing Wonwoo's arm to try and warm him up.
- Sometimes they look at each other and trade the tiniest, smallest smiles that almost go unnoticed.
- Sometimes, when Soonyoung is asked to talk about Wonwoo directly, he will literally admit that he "can't say it out loud." There have been three occasions (that I can think of on the spot) where Soonyoung has purposefully left things unsaid.
In the periphery of all these moments from Soonyoung and Wonwoo, we see these glimpses of ease, familiarity, comfort that's shared between the two of them. And sometimes, within the margin of their interactions, we see the traces of things that have been left unsaid—perhaps between them, perhaps only to the public, and left for the private moments between them. It is within these moments that I think about how much Soonyoung and Wonwoo are looking at each other, even when they're not. How much they see each other, even when they're turned away, or they're silent. How much is revealed in these gaps and spaces that they fill for each other—or leave unfilled.
The list above is not all-encompassing, and in fact, it shows so little of what I feel and what they likely share with each other. Regardless, there is a wealth of love that can be found in the depths of their silences, written in to the margins of their interactions.
These silences are for Soonyoung and Wonwoo to keep. As a writer? Well, that's the generative potential of fic writing, isn't it? But that's not everything, either. In the next few paragraphs, I want to talk about what moments we do get to bear witness, and where it draws me towards.
2. Knowledge
"I also learned the word dendrochronology—analyzing the patterns of tree rings to know everything that has ever happened to a tree. This is how I love you. I am peeling back my skin, layer by layer, so you will finally know everything inside me." — Roxane Gay, from Strange Gods
I find that I am always inexorably drawn to friendships. Perhaps more important to me than any romantic connection, is the love inherent to friendships. Deep, emotional connections and the mutual desire to nourish and nurture the little threads within a friendship that you weave together into a wonderful, beautiful tapestry of all these memories, these histories, stories, the present and future between you and one other person—or two, or three, or however many are part of this friendship.
Some of this attachment to friendships is drawn from my own experiences as a lesbian. The desire to form chosen families, to find love and richness in your bonds with those who you find kinship with. The desire to subvert heteronormative notions of the nuclear family and belonging. The solidarity of entrenching yourself in a community, although the notion of community is always troubled and complicated if you base it purely on identity. These families are not without hurt, too. It would be foolish for me to remain remiss on that.
But back to the point: I am in love with friendships. I am enamoured with exploring emotional sustenance that is found in the fostering of love and understanding within a friendship. And with Soonyoung and Wonwoo? They know each other. They know. Since 2013, Wonwoo and Soonyoung have iterated over and over again that they are each other's best friends.
What does it mean to "know each other best"? What does it mean for Wonwoo to reiterate this as an objective truth over and over again? What does it mean to be able to say this with confidence, that it's not just Wonwoo who knows Soonyoung, but that "we"—together, the two of them—know each other. It's not lost on me either that Wonwoo always uses superlatives when he's talking about Soonyoung. He's his "best" friend, the one who knows him "most," they know each other the "best," the person he spends the "most" time with.
In all the ways that Wonwoo and Soonyoung talk about each other, and particularly with Wonwoo, the undeniable reality is that their love have been carved out through years of time spent learning about each other, knowing each other. There's a note of pride whenever Wonwoo talks about how much Soonyoung knows him and vice versa. Under the foundations of their relationship with each other, we can always find this value, this significance they hold one another in relation to themselves. And this, to me, is the type of love that I am in love with.
There's an inherent vulnerability in the intimacy found in knowing someone. Really, really knowing someone, for all their flaws, their anxieties, their hopes and dreams. Knowing someone comes with time, it comes with history, and more than that, it comes with the desire to know. To discover one another, even in the midst of discovering yourself and who you are. The alchemy of friendship may be incidental, the meeting of one another may be luck, but like all relationships, to nurture a bond with one other person to the degree of which you can comfortably state that you know each other best takes effort, choice, and desire. And in the personal archives of their own memories, Soonyoung and Wonwoo have carved a space for each other inside of themselves.
3. Perseverance
"'I suppose you do love me, in your way,' I said to him one night close to dawn when we lay on the narrow bed. 'And how else should I love you—in your way?' he asked. I am still thinking about that'" — Anne Carson, from The Anthropology of Water
The funny thing about collecting quotes said by Wonwoo and Soonyoung is that you start to be able to draw parallels, overlaps, adjacencies in themes of what they actually say. Sometimes about each other, often not. If there's one clear theme I've noticed, it's the value that both Wonwoo and Soonyoung have placed on perseverance, persistency, effort. And more specifically, that no matter how long it may take or how slow the progress may be, that it's still worth it to persevere.
I think of perseverance in relation to Wonwoo and Soonyoung together a lot as well. It's found in their endurance throughout the hardships of idol training and the idol industry, in the sustainability of their friendship, having lasted so strong for more than a decade, and most of all, I like to think of it as their persistence of effort they reserve for each other. Friendships take work—and while I don't think it should be hard, not all the time at least and not more than it brings you joy—it does take persistence and effort. And for two people who have different modes of communication, different hobbies, different interests, I am fascinated by the perseverance of a friendship as strong as theirs. More than anything, I am interested in the ways they have met in the middle.
In previous conversations, CuriousCat responses, and tweets, I have glanced upon Soonyoung and Wonwoo's love languages. I have written a longer post that encompasses my thoughts on Soonyoung specifically, but have yet to complete Wonwoo's outside of an initial draft. Similarly, I've written a CC response that talks about my thoughts on gaming. I want to write full post on it with my thoughts a little more cohesively strung together than my original response, but this is where my mind turns to when I think about how two people with different modes of communication can express their love in a way that the other person understands.
In the most angst-ridden iterations of perseverance, I think of them as two people who write love letters to one another, but in languages that the other person does not understand. Both Soonyoung and Wonwoo have stated at different points throughout the years that neither of them are very comfortable with the words "I love you." I think of this, and then I think of the enormity of love and all the ways it can be expressed and delivered, but also how it can be incommunicable. In this angst-ridden version of Soonyoung and Wonwoo, they are two people who would be afraid to say these words for a very, very long time—and perhaps even longer, not knowing how to understand all the invisible ways that they are individually saying "I love you" to the other person. If they aren't saying this in a language that they both communicate in, how is the other person understanding it?
With all that being said, I think Soonyoung and Wonwoo do, in fact, learn how to communicate with each other. It's in how Wonwoo says that they know how to talk well with each other, it's in how Wonwoo said on Weverse that even it's important to be open with your feelings even if it's hard or if you feel shy, it's in how Soonyoung responded and said "say [your] feelings to me 🥰." And I know I keep harping on this, but the most striking example to me is in Wonwoo's hobby in gaming and how it demonstrates how the two of them have navigated mismatched means of communication (preliminary thoughts can be found in a mini-thread here). I have so much more to say on this now that Soonyoung showed up on Wonwoo's Huya Live (and if we've spoken in DMs, you probably already know of them), but I hope to write that in another post too.
I don't think that these have been necessarily compromises on either of their parts. "Compromise" feels like an insinuation of sacrifice; Soonyoung and Wonwoo aren't sacrificing parts of themselves, but instead, choosing to grow together in a way where they meet together in a space they carve for themselves.
And to me, this is what draws me to them as a ship the most. The perseverance of loving someone, so wholly and fundamentally, that you learn two languages: how to love them in the way you know, and how to love them in the way they know too.
4. Reciprocities
"For every interaction between things, there is always a pair of oppositely directed forces that are equal in strength. If you push hard on the world, for example, the world pushes hard on you. If you touch the world gently, the world will touch you gently in return. The way you touch others is the way others touch you." — from an Untitled Physics Textbook
Neither knowledge nor perseverance can be sustained if not for reciprocity. The concept of reciprocity is absolutely vital in how I think through relationships and connections—both of my own, but also in why I ship Soonyoung and Wonwoo.
In some ways, I think the level of reciprocity between the two of them is at times overlooked. For those who aren't as familiar with Soonyoung and Wonwoo's friendship, they may be inclined to dismiss Soonyoung as overbearing, too loud, too energetic, too much for a tsundere, quiet Wonwoo who pushes him away when he tries to hug him during concerts. On the flip side, for those who notice Wonwoo's constant attempts to capture Soonyoung's attention by annoying him, teasing him, biting him, or his Fondgazing Crimes, they may veer in the opposite direction and say that Soonyoung doesn't return the same level of affection.
I said this as a joke to Cat (
historiologies) earlier today, but it's partly my mission to denounce the idea that Soonyoung doesn't return Wonwoo's affection. Taking this outside the realm of shipping, I mean it in a purely platonic friendship sense too. Soonyoung does reciprocate. He does show care. But Soonyoung, when it comes to his friendships and especially when it comes to Wonwoo, is a lot more private than you initially guess (again, I know I keep making reference to this but I swear one day I'll expand on this more). And with it, you have to read between the lines. Returning once again to my thoughts on gaming, it's in how Soonyoung doesn't know anything about games and doesn't have interest in games, but still asked Wonwoo to teach him how to play. It's in how Soonyoung tells us that Wonwoo likes it when people take interest in his interests—and then shows us indirectly that that's exactly what Soonyoung has tried to do for Wonwoo. It's in how Soonyoung, who in the same breath as telling us that he's never even played PUBG once, cheers Wonwoo on and says "if it's Wonwoo, then we'll surely get chicken tonight" (and how did Soonyoung know that the victory screen for PUBG has the words "winner winner chicken dinner" if he hasn't been paying attention to Wonwoo playing PUBG? Soonyoung makes specific reference to something that you wouldn't know about the game unless you have paid attention to the details of its gameplay in some capacity).
It's also in how Wonwoo has talked about his own concerns about being boring, too ordinary, that he's not funny enough; once on Hit the Road, another time in an older variety show (maybe OFD1?)—and Soonyoung immediately rebutted and told him that he's funny just the way he is. It's in how Wonwoo says the words: "he [Soonyoung] understands me." It's in how Wonwoo apologizes on Weverse for "lacking" the vocabulary to express himself well, and Soonyoung immediately replies and assures him that "you [Wonwoo] are not lacking, I think you're really cool."
It's Soonyoung who never forgets to remind us that Wonwoo is "irreplaceable," (Seventeen Meets Seventeen Magazine, 2018), that he's "a gentle person" and (Carat Magazine, 2020), that he's "surprisingly affectionate" (Caratland Memory Book, 2018), that he's "a very warm person inside" (Carat Magazine, 2020). And if you notice them in interviews, more often than not, they are encouraging each other in subtle ways. They're always the first one to laugh at each other's jokes (here's a brief compilation with no subs), to hype up each other's comments, and when they do tease? It's never meanspirited. They never put each other down—and in fact, Wonwoo is the only member I can think of who has insisted that Soonyoung is smart (even though it's sometimes masked as a joke) on three different occasions.
For all that Wonwoo sees himself as someone who isn't enough, I think Soonyoung has always made it clear to Wonwoo that is not lacking. He holds Wonwoo with such warmth and affection, and even in the opportunities to snipe at each other, they always speak to each other with such fondness. And whenever Soonyoung does have the opportunity to remind everyone of Wonwoo's gentleness, he does. The way they treat each other is gentle and filled with warmth, and if you focus on them during Vlives or interviews together, you'll notice this.
They care for each other. They really do. Wonwoo wouldn't say "we know each other best" if it wasn't reciprocated, returned in full by Soonyoung, and felt by Wonwoo himself. And of course, vice versa.
5. Intention
"I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way." — Kiersten White, from The Chaos of Stars
Choosing to learn and know someone, to persevere with them, to reciprocate with your heart—they all take intention. In the end, this is one of the themes that matter most to me, and is a theme that you'll find in most of my writing. It feels gauche to reference my own works, but I wrote this line in jump, stunt, and tumble:
"It’s easy to talk to Wonwoo and get lost in his small smiles, his deep voice, the quiet jokes and banter in between period breaks. It’s even easier to fall in love with him.
It’s a choice Soonyoung makes over and over again. To choose to love."
Knowing someone and having a whole library's worth of history with someone means that you don't only know the best part of them, but the worst too. You witness them during the hardest parts of living, and you're there with them, holding their hands takes intention. To know someone—to really know, in all the ways that count—takes intention.
Learning to speak someone's language and how to communicate in your own takes intention. You choose to continue loving them, even with all your knowledge and vulnerabilities that flay you to your barest bones. To persevere with one another, for one another, takes intention.
To not only let their love fill you up, but to fill your love in them with equal measures takes intention.
I don't have a lot more to say that I haven't said before. Intentionality threads through their choice to love for each other, in all the ways they've learned to love to each other. And I think there is something very, very powerful in saying "On purpose, I will care for you. On purpose, I love you."
Soonyoung and Wonwoo hold love and care for each other. On purpose.
Last thoughts:
If you actually read this entire post, once again, I really have to thank you for taking the time to do so. I know this was one big ramble, but I wanted to try capturing some of my thoughts on what draws me to SoonWoo as a ship, and what I tend to extract from them myself as well. This is, of course, entirely subjective! I have no interest in pretending to have any authority on the ship, or on Soonyoung or Wonwoo as individuals, and I am fully aware that I'm playing around in the realm of interpretation and fiction. But, well, this is part of the fun of writing those funny little fanned fictions, right?
I hope, regardless of how much of my own reflections resonated with you, that this was a fun read! Thank you for staying with me, and if you have any thoughts, I would absolutely love to hear them.
curiouscat
ao3
no subject
Date: 2021-01-21 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-21 05:16 pm (UTC)