Sung Hyunjae & Self. God, Human.
i find it very interesting that sung hyunjae has such a strong Self - something that is shown even in the beginning with small details like how picky he can be with most things (to the point of seeming fussy despite his composed image). a dichotomy for someone who has been denied autonomy of existence- denied a Self- in the first place.
with all of his hundreds of overlapping existences, he still retained the identity of "sung hyunjae, seseong guild leader"- even at the point he lost his memories, even when he was being reset at a cosmic level- he desperately clung to retain his sense of self.
the ego is so important to his character, despite- in spite of the crescent moon's plans of taking it away altogether. she made the contract with that purpose in the first place. but it is a bit cruel and ironic that the end goal was to strip him of his ego and make him into a perfect being to replace the Source, but in the process she gave him such a strong existence, persistent identity, a stubborn sense of Self.
as all things do, this brought me to hyunjae & yoojin.
we see it first with sigma- when yoojin acknowledged his existence and freed him from the dungeon- hence creating a separate entity with his own unique existence.
it is yoojin, who sees sung hyunjae as a human first underneath all of his semi-godlike glory. who finds the fact that he can't open a convenience store kimbap endearing. who acknowledges every sung hyunjae to have ever existed in all of his lifetimes as not just sung hyunjae of the first world or sung hyunjae of the second world- but as a real, individual person.
sung hyunjae of the world with many lakes. sung hyunjae of the world with two suns. sung hyunjae who likes to knit and has a complex about his baby face. sung hyunjae who picks the crust off of his bread, who likes to keep an odd assortment of trinkets in his inventory. sung hyunjae who enjoys fishing, who eats his shrimp tails, who likes to cook for people.
sung hyunjae- who, despite going through every day in the excruciatingly painful boredom of a repeated existence, still loves people and their mundane lives, still cares for children, still looks after people who depend on him, still still still. it is all sung hyunjae.
yes, he has clear parallels to crescent moon- he was molded after her image of a perfect Source, after all. it would seem that like her, he can care for everyone equally and just that, no more and no less. a suffocating, helpless experience for the recipient. he's so much like her, so no wonder he was the one chosen by her.
but in reality he became so much more than that. a unique existence as the little moon- but quite unlike the crescent moon.
sung hyunjae is capable of anger, of loss, of sympathy, and of frustration- a myriad of conflicting human emotions.
he has a wish to stay for every birthday, a wish to stay for every funeral.
and in the process of turning him into a God, he was made more human than ever.
