*taps the mic* Is this thing on? Okay so there's this thing that's been annoying me for a damn long ass time, and it's the way people have twisted the meaning of "lone wolf" in general and the way they apply it to characters and think it's a fucking compliment.
Every time someone calls Yoo Joonghyuk a lone wolf in that tone I want to chew through a wall to this person and knock them on the head. Cuz people say it as something cool and badass, alpha male sigma grindset or whatever the fuck. And that's not what a lone wolf is.
A lone wolf isn't natural and it's not cool. It's a wolf that has lost something essential to its nature.
It can't defend territory. A pack announces itself through howls that overlap. A single wolf howling isn't a warning. It's an invitation. It's a question. It's a voice calling into the dark, hoping something will answer. When another pack hears a lone wolf, they don't retreat. They investigate, chase it off, kill it if they can. The lone wolf doesn't hold territory. It moves through the spaces between packs. Always passing through, never belonging anywhere long enough to actually rest.
It can't howl with anything resembling happiness. Wolves howl for all sorts of things—to assemble the pack, warn rivals, coordinate the hunt, but they also howl just because they're together. It's the sound of belonging. A lone wolf can howl, but its howl is never answered. It calls into the silence and the silence sends nothing back. The lone wolf never howls for joy, because it doesn't even remember what joy sounds like.
Wolves don't choose to be alone.
The lone wolf is NOT some badass fucking alpha who rejected the pack and not a rogue who struck out on its own for freedom. It's an exile. An orphan. A survivor whose pack got destroyed by hunters or disease or a rival pack that killed everyone it loved. It's the wolf that made one mistake too many and got driven out. It's the wolf that left not because it wanted to, but because the territory couldn't feed another mouth and staying would mean starvation for everyone.
The lone wolf is alone because something was taken from it. Because it lost. Because it failed. Because it's the one who lived when no one else did.
Every lone wolf carries a loss it can't name. Every lone wolf is looking for something it can't find alone. Every lone wolf is a wound shaped like an animal. This is why YJH's character is so freaking sad to me. Not because he's cold or distant or refuses to explain himself and then gets misunderstood terribly by everyone who's not KDJ (who still manages to misinterpret him constantly. they're both hopeless). He's sad because he's been a lone wolf for 1863 lifetimes. He's watched his pack die, over and over and over. He's watched them die so many times that he's forced himself to not care in some regressions because the grief was just too heavy to carry again. He's walked through worlds alone, carrying the memory of people who don't exist anymore, howling into silence that never answers.
He's not an alpha who chose solitude. He's a wolf who lost everything so many times that he forgot what it felt like to have anything.
And then Kim Dokja appeared.
KDJ, who is somehow the most clever person in the room and also the dumbest when it comes to himself. Who lies as easily as he breathes and thinks he's being subtle when he's about as subtle as a brick through a window. Who will manipulate everyone around him "for their own good" and then act shocked when they're upset about it. Genuinely one of the most exhausting fucking people YJH has ever met, and YJH has met a lot of people over 1863 rounds.
And KDJ didn't ask to join that sad one person pack. He just refused to leave. He scavenged from the wolf's kills and figured out the wolf's patterns before the wolf even knew he was being watched, and then started inserting himself at exactly the right moments. Died for the wolf and its companions. Came back. Died again. Stayed. Stayed. Stayed again.
Insufferable. Too stubborn to die properly. Gave the wolf some gray hairs but also the reason the wolf hasn't completely lost its mind. The reason why slowly, the lone wolf remembered.
Remembered that it was lonely. That it had been lonely for so long that the loneliness had become invisible, had become the water it swam in, had become indistinguishable from its own body. It had forgotten that there was another way to exist. It had forgotten that the absence of pack wasn't a natural state but a wound.
KDJ didn't heal the wound—that's not how that type of wounds work. But he made the wolf feel it again. Made the wolf remember that it was missing something.
This is why YJH's anger at KDJ's sacrifices is so immense. Not because KDJ is weak (he's not, despite y'all's love to infantilize him) or because he's stealing YJH's perceived leader role or his companions. Because YJH spent 1863 lifetimes learning not to love, not to need, and not to hope. He built himself into something that could survive anything because he had nothing left to lose. And then this annoying impossible motherfucker anomaly appeared and gave him something he could actually lose forever. YJH didn't ask for it and didn't want it.
But for the first time in 1863 lifetimes, the hurt and loneliness weren't the only things. And turns out, KDJ isn't the only bastard who doesn't know how to let go.
Anyway that's it I'm done thanks *drops the mic*
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