@tom-failure posted some really interesting thoughts recently in response to my post on rfa’s bodily dissociation, and i wanted to follow up specifically on some yooseven thoughts they brought up bc their relationship is so intriguing and complex!!
pls note i haven’t been active in the mysme fandom for very long so apologies if this has already been discussed to death lol. i’ll talk about seven first and then yoosung.
i was thinking about seven’s pranks yesterday, specifically the prank where he convinces a freshly caffeinated yoosung that he has the drink-caffeine-and-die disease (or smth) and the only cure is to drink a bunch of chocolate milk. i found myself imagining what it must have been like for yoosung, who really thought he was about to die, and the fear and anxiety he must have felt in his body.
but it got me wondering why seven would even do this. there’s such a difference btw a (relatively) harmless prank like “updog” and “you’re going to die.” i think it comes down to a few things.
the first is that seven (obviously) hates himself. undoubtedly. he doesn’t see him leaving saeran as an unfortunate thing that happened due to the system/their circumstances, but rather as HIS fault. and instead of confronting this, it feels like too much to think about, so he pushes it away and avoids it.
and he hates himself for it. he doesn’t think that he’s worthy of love, or trust. and he uses his pranks and harmful trolling as a way to prove this—to demonstrate that no, in fact, he should not be believed, he should not be trusted.
because seven does not see himself as loveable, he does not see the whole, loving people he is in relationships with. he views the members of the rfa as npc’s who are there to entertain and distract him—people who are inevitable going to leave him because he is entirely leave-able.
but then i started wondering—why would yoosung believe him? a part of the supposed ridiculousness of seven’s jokes are how unbelievable and absurd they are, and yet how yoosung falls so completely for them.
but yoosung falls for them because he loves him, and trusts him. utterly and completely, because *that’s who yoosung is*, he will always believe seven.
yoosung basically grew up in the rfa. and rika, v, and seven, jumin, jaehee, and zen—they told him that his loveability laid in things outside of himself, whether that be the charity acts he does, his resume, his job.
and yoosung believes them. he *agrees* with them. he doesn’t believe what his body, heart, and mind tell him, and seven *never* takes accountability for the shit he pulls, so i think yoosung, too, starts to think of it as *his* fault. yoosung will keep believing that and keep going back to him because he hates himself, too. rika gave him the false validation that the life he had built outside of himself was Definitely Good, and now that she’s gone he’s not convinced of anything.
i think yoosung sees himself as a lesser person than the others because he doesn’t have a grand plan for his life, and so the only thing he thinks he has to give is his body. this is why he’s so willing to put himself in harms way to protect the others, to an unhealthy amount.
without mc disrupting their cycle, the yooseven dynamic would probably just continue, with seven continuously trying to push yoosung away with his harmful “jokes” and avoidance, and yoosung staying and staying and getting more and more jaded and resentful towards seven, before eventually leaving, too.
thank god that doesn’t happen tho 😁 LOL
thx for reading my takes!! comment/reblog with your thoughts if you feel called to, i love hearing different ppls takes on the many relationship dynamics at play in rfa <3
