it genuinely gets to a point because why did I just wake up from a dream where I went to see Amadeus in concert at the Vienna golden hall. and the movie was playing SHOT FOR SHOT FRAME BY FRAME in my head
There's no one left in-universe who can or will talk about Jaybin as he really was.
Bruce is the founder of the Jaybin Slander Department;
Alfred is no better.
Dick wasn't around much, didn't know him that well.
If Barbara ever interacted with him in his original run, I haven't found it yet.
I mean, he had some interactions with the Teen Titans, but was he really close with any of them?
I suppose Gordon could, assuming he isn't in on the Jason-bashing. I haven't seen it but I could be missing something.
And, well, Jason... somehow, I don't think anyone's asking Jason what he was like as a kid, nor is he really a reliable source. Autobiographical memory is weird.
No one in-universe will ever really talk about this bright, friendly, eager kid, and it's a tragedy.
He was smart and clever and had so much compassion.
He wanted so badly to help people, and he found joy in his work as Robin.
He had a dramatic flair and he was kind of a nerd and he was really funny on occasion.
He was so deeply, fundamentally good, and the fact that somehow his legacy has been twisted into one of anger and recklessness is honestly a crime.
It makes me so desperately sad that there's not a single character who can even start to undo the lasting damage of a four-decade smear campaign against a kid who did nothing to deserve it.
naruto au where at some point freshly after minato took office but before sasunaru were born, mikoto and kushina got drunk and ended up writing a marriage contract between their future children, and they used his official yondaime stamp on the contract. mikoto takes it back to the uchiha compound when fugaku comes to pick her up, and just forgets all about it.
fast forward to pre-genin or freshly genin sasuke looking through his mother's stuff and he finds a document signed by the fucking yondaime betrothing the second uchiha heir and the uzumaki heir together, and now has to decide whether he should a) pretend he never saw it, b) burn it and hope there are no other copies anywhere, c) do his filial duty as the last uchiha and track down naruto because damn it, they've got to honour their mothers' last wishes, it's not like he wants to (of course not) it's just about Honour and Respect and blah blah blah
naruto is of course horrified about having to marry sasuke-teme (sakura: you don't have to; naruto: no, no, i'm going to) but!!! he has a mom!! and his mom and sasuke's mom were friends!!! maybe there are pictures of his mom/their moms together!!! and isn't marriage just another way of having a family? naruto's been wanting a family for so long, he will finally be living with someone else and they will hang out all the time, and train, and become stronger together, and that's so cool, isn't it? and sasuke is weak when naruto says all of this, so he immediately has him sign every legally binding document (and if he accidentally makes naruto an uchiha via marriage, well. naruto should have read the paperwork better)
bonus point if even though it's written on the back of an ichiraku menu the document is completely valid, and the rest of konoha just has to watch in utter befuddlement as the marriage goes through and the last uchiha marriage the village pariah
(danzo is furious but he also feels so vindicated: he's always said the uchiha were vying for the jinchuuriki, but everyone called him paranoid, guess what! he was right!)
Okay, hello! I'm suffering from some real BAD Wooyoung brainrot rn and instead of going outside and touching grass as I probably should I'm instead collating a lil timeline of Leftyoung moments because I absolutely adore how this man, in an industry wherein idols are expected to remain politically neutral, pushes the boundaries and posts/says things that have very obvious implications much more than any other idol I can think of in recent memory. Today is also the one year anniversary of the start of the 2024 Korean martial law crisis, coincidentally, making this post even more apt.
This is really just me making a reference for myself but I am posting it anyway in case any newer atiny somehow haven't seen this stuff yet, or you, dear reader, also fancy joining me in Wooyoung brainrot. For funsies. It's basically just the story of stuff that went down between December 2024 and June this year. This post is also ridiculously long and comprehensive, fair warning, so I've bolded and coloured some subheadings and made some sections small to hopefully make it a little more readable!
Disclaimer!! I consider myself a pretty decent Korean speaker; I started learning it over 10 years ago now and can understand it well enough that I generally don't need subs on content unless there's a pop culture reference I'm not getting. That said, I am not a native speaker. Hopefully my translations are all fine though; as a language and linguistics student I favoured nuance and getting the right message across as opposed to exact 1:1 translation so. If anyone has any corrections I am happy to hear them. A lot of the content in here comes from K-Atiny online, original posts have been linked! Also sorry if the formatting fucks up, tumblr really hates doing small text lol
Before we start rhapsodising over our outspoken king:
Some background/key dates:
3rd December 2024: Then president Yoon Seok Yeol, leader of the People's Power Party (PPP/국민의힘, Korea's main right wing/conservative party) declares martial law, accusing the Democratic Party (DPK/더불어민주당, the main liberal party) of undermining the country by collaborating with North Korean communists. This was a very blatant attempt at a self-coup to establish himself as an authoritarian leader, which in a country that has suffered greatly at the hands of multiple military dictatorships, was a supremely stupid idea. Both parties, his own and the opposition, strongly opposed the declaration.
South Korea as it currently stands is a pretty young country, and has been governed democratically only since 1987! People who protested against Chun Doo Hwan in the 80s are very much still around and remember what living under a military dictatorship felt like, and their parent's generation were protesting Syngman Rhee in the 50s/1960. To imagine the student movement wouldn't get out there again, or that the last generation of student protestors would even consider risking their children suffering the way they did (if you're not familiar with the Gwangju Uprising, do read about it, but be warned it's an extremely tough read), is ignorant at best. It didn't take long for protests to erupt country wide, with attendance estimates ranging wildly from 300,000+ to over a million at the largest ones. There's a lot more to the 2024 martial law crisis than this brief summary but I don't want it to dominate the post :') TLDR Yoon was unsuccessful; only hours later, on December 4th, the National Assembly overrode the martial law declaration in an emergency session.
Protests against Yoon took place throughout December (with further rallies taking place throughout early 2025 as things progressed), demanding his impeachment, then removal, then arrest. All of these were successful, thankfully. Now, quickly, a few more important dates:
14th December 2024: Yoon Seok Yeol is impeached!
4th April 2025: The impeachment is upheld, and Yoon Seok Yeol is removed from office!
29th-30th May 2025: Early voting opens for the South Korean Presidential Election!
3rd June 2025: Lee Jae Myung of the DPK declares victory in the election after narrowly losing to Yoon in 2022! He is the current president of SK!
One more thing for context: the colour red and number 2 are associated with the PPP, while the colour blue and number 1 are associated with the DPK. So, in this post, if you see "party no. 2", that's the PPP/Yoon (right), while "party no. 1" is the DPK/Lee (liberal; not saying left because they're more 'centre' lol). Okay, all that contextual rambling aside:
Jung Leftyoung: an idol who cares not for letting people misunderstand him (December 7th-December 14th)
Jung Leftyoung is by far my favourite nickname K-atiny have given him. A quick linguistic breakdown: 우 ((w)oo) means 'right', whereas 좌 (jwa) means 'left'; hence 정좌영 (jung jwayoung, jung leftyoung) instead of 정우영 (jung wooyoung). The way Koreans do wordplay will forever inspire both rapt awe and intense envy in me, honestly.
The earliest use of the nickname I can find is from December 2024 in a few tweets we will come to later! It seems Twitter was the breeding ground for the first posts about this on December 9th, but as far as I can tell this whole saga blew up big due to a post on a Daum cafe (a type of forum) for women in their 20s made the same day titled "2찍 오해 받은게 너무 억울한 나머지 소신발언 한 남자아이돌", or, "A male idol speaks his mind because he's so upset [to have been] unfairly misunderstood as a party no. 2 [supporter]". rough translation; 소신발언 means to speak one's mind/state your opinions that you very strongly believe in even if it goes against the majority, to state your convictions.
This misunderstanding is pretty common knowledge in the fandom by this point, I think. On December 7th 2024, Wooyoung uploaded a photo of himself in a fox onesie holding San by the hood of his wolf onesie with the caption "I caught a wolf"
It's cute, a little bit of humour in a rough time after days of protests and unrest, perhaps. However, because his onesie is red, and San's grey onesie looks kinda blue, this caused a lot of uproar after a Twitter user notorious for starting hate trains posted it with the implication he's a PPP supporter. December 7th was the first impeachment hearing. The motion failed as PPP members boycotted the vote; for a motion to pass in the National Assembly, a two-thirds majority is required. Put very simply, 200 votes in the 300-seat parliament needed to be in favour of impeachment, but there weren't even enough legislators present without PPP members there to vote; the DPK had 192 seats. So the timing was not ideal, and people were upset at the implication that Wooyoung might be a PPP/Yoon supporter. It was a very charged time.
But the very next day, December 8th, Wooyoung came out SWINGING. There was absolutely no way he was letting himself be seen as a PPP supporter, I genuinely believe from his reaction that he'd rather lose biting Yeosang or boykissing privileges for life. Starting with his Fromm message in the morning:
[I'd potentially translate the last message in the right pic more as "don't get hurt physically or emotionally"]
Protests outside the National Assembly were once again taking place, and Wooyoung addresses them here, although somewhat covertly. There's still that plausible deniability there to fall back on if he needs to. Then, later that day, Ateez had a Fromm fansign, at which an Atiny who was going to the protests afterwards had a touching interaction that they then tweeted about:
Wooyoungie...
When I told him I was going to the National Assembly after this, he held my hands tightly...
(Quoting him) Did you see what I sent on Fromm this morning? Dress warmly and don't catch a cold. Aaah
This is much more blatant support, and these two things very quickly gained traction in both Korean and international Atiny spaces. People were praising him for being so openly supportive of the protesters, and just as quickly as the 'damage' to his reputation had occurred, he'd started building a new one for himself. It was genuinely impressive how fast he started changing the tides. Being bold yet again on the 8th, he posted these Instagram stories:
Blue clothing... and SNSD's Into The New World. ITNW became a protest song in 2016 after Ewha Womans University students sang it during a peaceful protest against changes being made without consulting them before they were forcibly and excessively suppressed by 1600 police officers. Later that year and into early 2017 protests against then president Park Geun Hye saw it sang in the streets, its lyrics about perseverance in the face of hardship and togetherness through the dark resonating with those who were then, too, fighting for impeachment.
Young women, most of whom were students, led both the protests and the domination of this song as a protest anthem. Since then, it has been sung at a rally celebrating the decriminalisation of abortion in Korea, and at pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and Thailand. And, most recently, at the protests against Yoon Seok Yeol (also led mainly by young women; over 60% of the votes that got Yoon elected in the first place were cast by men in their 20s, and the pro-Yoon counterprotests were predominantly men in their 20s and 30s). Beyond attempted self-coup/corruption vs being against all that shit, there was also a stark gender slant to it, with a lot of angry incels being willing to overlook blatant corruption if it meant getting back at feminists (sounds familiar, huh?)
So Wooyoung was not being subtle in the slightest, and though Atiny and basically all Kpop fandoms are female dominated, it was also pretty fucking cool of him to be so blatantly anti-Yoon when a lot of men his age were too busy being anti-woman instead. In saying that, the bar is in hell, but it's always nice to know your fave (probably) isn't a total incel and misogynistic loser, I guess. But I digress. Man had a name to clear and I don't think I've ever known anyone to clear theirs faster. Ending the day, he reacted with a heart to a candle emoji, symbolising peaceful protest
...and then reacted to so many comments saying things in the vein of "we love and support you, Wooyoung, let's be happy" that people's phones were blowing up, lmao
I know that you're Jung Left-young so please stop now, fuck
Above is one of the earlier instances of the nickname I've seen. He replied to another Atiny who said they went to the protests:
and ended the day with a heartfelt message that definitely would have won everyone over if they weren't already so utterly and thoroughly endeared by the display he'd made that day.
I'll get going now, everyone
People who went out [to protest] today, don't forget to take cold medicine
Warm up and go to sleep
Thank you for your hard work
I am okay 🙃
Sometimes when things are unfair [/I'm unfairly misunderstood] I can't say that "it's unfair" or that "it's not like that". It's hard, but I think time resolves it, so I just go on living.
My personality... is that I have my convictions/beliefs, and not only do I not tip toe around them, but I can't act differently for the sake of putting on an appearance.
I just wanted to let my people [fans] know that one thing.
Have good dreams and let's all be happy together 🙃
But people had gotten the message that he refused to be unfairly misunderstood, they were already on his side from the support for protestors and the stories, and they were extremely endeared by the fact that he wouldn't let it go the entire day because he felt so wronged by the misunderstanding and the fact that anyone would think he's a right winger/PPP supporter that he did everything bar saying the words explicitly to prove that he isn't.
This particularly passionate Atiny and the quote retweet, both of which brought me to tears, were viewed over 10,000 times even before the Daum post:
Original tweet (bottom): @/(account that posted the accusation) You crazy bitch, because of you Wooyoung has gone fucking frenetic*, he's suddenly posting a photo of a blue shirt he wore 4 months ago with Into The New World as background music, and his nickname became Jung Leftyoung. Fucking bastard, delete your post, [our] Wooyoung is a pure blue blood who follows Lee Jae Myung on his private Insta account.
Fuck, is the last line true? That's not just a no. 1 party supporter, that's a crazy left winger. Shit.
Quote RT (top): ah fuck hahahahaha a male idol on a private account
It's not for jotmok** or a secret relationship with a female idol it's "following Lee Jae Myung", ridiculous. [He's] just a fucking walking human smurf. There's nothing that's not funny about the nickname Jung Leftyoung.
*급발진 refers to sudden forward motion like a kickstart? so to describe emotions it means like a sudden strong reaction like a burst of anger. I had no clue how to put that into one word so frenetic is what I chose but basically he reacted very strongly lmao
**I have no idea how to explain 좆목 because online slang is truly my downfall with Korean. it's a combination of 좆 (penis, used to call something bad) and 친목 (friendship). as far as I understand it's like a circlejerk? or a clique? like, making a smaller community within a bigger online community which means newer members can't participate? it's so hard to put into words but it's a bad thing and it's heavily discouraged in Korean online communities, that's all the context you really need to understand the post I think :') These translations in particular were so difficult actually lmao someone please tell me if I'm wrong at all
Another tweet from the Daum post with over 10k views:
Jung Wooyoung is a fan of Korean history and talked about the movie May 18* in 2020 as a recommendation, does it makes sense that he'd be a no. 2 party supporter?
*May 18 is a film about the Gwangju Uprising, the Korean title literally means "Splendid Holiday"
Okay Wooyoung we get it, you're a party no. 1 supporter, we all know
And thus, the nickname was born. The Daum thread ended with two screenshots that I do not know the original dates of posting of, but solidified my love for this man more than anything else had thus far, including his IOMT hair, bite-to-show-love tendencies, and Woosan, which are all tough to beat:
Top: Sit down / You know, hyung has blue blood flowing through his body
Bottom: There is no future for a nation that has forgotten [its] history!
The ending comment to the thread documenting all this made me giggle, too: "I'm not a fan, I don't know their faces, I don't even know how many members Ateez has. Stop censorship. Don't take the red one away, what has Santa Claus done wrong?"
But just. Wow. The curse-loving Atiny was right about him having a strong reaction. Wooyoung is always ready to fight for what he believes in and he was more than willing to prove it. And by this point everyone was on his side,. While the comments were mostly laughing about how funny the nickname and the idea of him having a secret account to follow Lee Jae Myung are, a lot of people were also agreeing it was unfair he was misunderstood in the first place, and that they wouldn't be able to stand it either. Many comments disagreed with the idea of policing the clothes celebrities wear in the first place. Some even commiserated that they had red items of clothing they wanted to be able to wear again without being seen as a supporter of Yoon's bullshit. The Daum post got over 70,000 views and almost 500 comments, and if Wooyoung's original intention with the fox onesie was to bring people laughter during a tense time, he definitely succeeded, just in a very roundabout way. Jung Leftyoung was a hit and his supposed private LJM following account became a thing of legend.
But he didn't stop there. He'd opened the floodgates; even after clearing his name he'd gotten a good response and he'd seen that he can push the boundary, he can be a little more explicit than one might expect of their idols, and he can keep being Jung Leftyoung because it's something he genuinely cares about.
On December 14th Yoon Seok Yeol is impeached; the second attempt succeeded. Wooyoung, coincidentally, did a POP Live that day, after Music Bank Japan. And for a fair few of the 17 minutes he was live, he reads out comments saying things like "are you in a good mood? you must be in a good mood" to which he eventually, quickly, replies "if you already know, then why are you asking?" The live was also full of some very... interesting smiles in the beginning, although he said he was happy because he did good on stage and because the comments were all so cute. The fact that many of the comments were basically asking if he's glad the bastard was impeached was probably nothing at all to do with that. At one point he also read out a comment calling him "so transparent", lmao?? One of the clips from this live got over 600k views on twt:
"Stop asking me if I feel good. You already know [so why keep asking?]"
I saw this clip because of a quote RT that said "i'll never call you Wooyoung again, i'll call you Leftyoung by all means" with like 1.1k likes. All the other quotes were also calling him Leftyoung. And everyone was losing their shit over how funny they found it lmao
An enduring reputation known by even non-Atiny (April 4th and May-June 2025)
Fast forward to April 4th: The impeachment is upheld and finalised, and it's time for Yoon to get the fuck out. Most Jung Leftyoung content between December and this point were memes, most notably a couple in February with the absolutely hilarious blue monitor trend video wherein he specifically said "please don't make this a meme". Blueyoung with all his blue blood was just too funny to resist, I guess.
But the April removal of Yoon brought Leftyoung back to his Insta story, which was about as subtle as a punch in the nose:
The emoji. The blue shirt. The background being Roy Kim's Bom Bom Bom (with the opening lyrics "spring spring spring has come"). And the cheeky lil smile!! Just under 500k views on Twitter and around 3k quote tweets praising the lord and saviour who isn't afraid to advocate for democracy however he can, Jung Leftyoung. But he wasn't done; he followed this up with a video of him, Jongho, and Yeosang performing... you guessed it! Into The New World (link is to tiktok!). Such a random fancam to be uploading in April 2025, to say the fanmeet at which they performed the cover was in July 2024. What a coincidence!
I'm sure you can guess what the quote RTs looked like now without me explaining it. Again, these stories blew up both on the Korean side of the net and the Western side, and a word that kept coming up on the Korean side was transparency, or 투명. He was praised for this above all else, with a lot of comments about how refreshing it was to see from an idol. Another word I saw getting thrown around a lot was 호감, meaning either a crush, or someone you have a generally favourable impression of/who is generally likeable. Which, wholly agree! It warms my heart to see so many people saying it about him :')
All of this culminated in late May - SK held an early election (the next wasn't scheduled until 2027...) following the impeachment, and we all know what election season looks like for idols. No blue or red, no 1 or 2 gestures, fuck it don't even talk about numbers. Or colours. Get that kindergarten shit OUT OF HERE.
Early voting was held on May 29th and May 30th. The original post from the Daum cafe was posted to theqoo on May 28th and with 65k views on the thread he went viral AGAIN. The day before early voting opened. Such a fucking icon. When I said the word 호감 came up a lot, I was not kidding:
The second one down, 303, says "wow, I didn't know but he's totally 호감". One commenter said they don't know idols but that he seems like "a proper young man" (I can't include screenshots of all of them because of the image limit but if you can read Korean the thread is here, and the one I am about to discuss is here)
Only 2 days later, on May 30th, Leftyoung goes viral on theqoo YET AGAIN in a thread that got over 71k views in the end. The reason? Well, Ateez were headed to Kuala Lumpur for K-pop Masterz on May 31st, and as per usual when kpop idols travel, airport photos of them came out and people noticed something a bit... interesting... about Wooyoung and Yunho's:
They make me giggle every single time I see them. Wooyoung goes to make the peace sign out of habit, only for Yunho to stop him just a liiiittle too late. The post is titled "Leftyoung apologising for making V sign at the airport", and apologise he did:
ha
I'm a real idiot
Doing the V sign, really
How many years has it been [/I have years of experience]
Are you kidding me?
I can't get my act together
I'm sorry...ha
I love you, Yunho
Thank you
He sounds genuinely so upset and angry with himself. Which people noticed and commented on; a lot of the comments were along the lines of "poor Leftyoung, he sounds distraught". But a huge number of comments, which made me giggle, said things like (these are all actual comment translations, not paraphrasing):
"I don't think you need to clarify..."
"It's so fucking funny that it's true-blue Jung Leftyoung, who follows Lee Jae Myung on his private account. Whatever you do with your fingers, I understand hahahaha" (this was almost 6 whole months after that original joke, which apparently became a well known meme)
"Leftyoung, you're alright. No one suspects you."
"Even if Leftyoung went to the polling booth in red clothes, there's no doubt."
"It's okay... we... all know..."
"Jung Leftyoung, you're Leftyoung, so it's okay."
"But even if this friend [Wooyoung] doesn't explain it, we're already familiar. Lol, he already lost his name, he's Leftyoung."
"Leftyoung is okay because he has trust."
"Leftyoung, no one will say anything even if you paint [yourself] red from head to toe."
And so on; there are 558 comments and of the ones that aren't deleted, most of them look like this, or are praising Yunho for his sense and quick thinking (and, in some cases, asking who he is lmao. Felt that).
Which leads me to my all time personal favourite comment in all of this, which really emphasises how far from them/him this got and is thus getting a screenshot because a lot of comments on theqoo end up deleted and I need this archived forever:
I don't really know ATEEZ, but I know Leftyoung. I [don't misunderstand hahahaha
Later, this photo with Gallant from June 1st had a similarly disappointed reaction from himself to earlier:
The last photo - it's a habit :(
To which everyone was just as understanding (I saw this in one tweet that got almost 2.7k likes and 23,000 views, lol). June 3rd was voting day, and in Korea when you vote you get a lil red stamp, kinda like an "I voted!" sticker in the US. If you're like me and interested in little things like this, here is a concise explanation behind these stamps, which I found fascinating! Anyway, Ateez released these cute lil helm print outs that you could stamp to show you voted the Atiny way, and Wooyoung posted a photo of his to show he voted and encourage others to do the same! (As did San (with his wedding ring on, left ring finger...) and my parents Joong and Hwa, shoutout to them :') Woosan's are so nicely centred, it's very satisfying).
And, finally, LJM wins and Wooyoung's Insta story on June 4th looks very...
Blue 💙 and the digivice 25th colour evolution belt and digimon adventure korean theme playing were sick as hell, he never stops being the coolest mf in the world
I've spent hours making this extremely long and rambly post that no one will probably read but I'm glad I did cuz if I wasn't down bad enough for Wooyoung— sorry, Leftyoung before, I truly am now. The way he says how he feels as much as he can within the restraints of his job, refused to let a misunderstanding sit because FUCK if anyone is allowed to believe he's a gross, mouldy, brain broken YSY supporter, and remained so consistent with it that even people who aren't Atiny and don't know Ateez were like "ah yes, our Leftyoung"? Someone tried to accuse him of being right wing and he went "let me quickly become both the comic relief we need right now and face of idols who are willing to be political for a moment", there is absolutely no one more iconic than him I fear.
If anyone DID read this immense yap fest then thank you and also I'm sorry? The brain worms are brain worming? If anyone thinks I forgot anything or thinks my Korean needs correcting please let me know, otherwise it's time to go back to posting regular photo dumps because they don't take 8 hours to collate and type up and edit.... I need to go to bed, whoops.
I’m gonna be real I feel like if kinger had that long time alone and then Caine made his wife to uplift his spirits like in the one post you did which caused a psychological break and make Caine have to put a limiter or filter something to prevent risk of abstraction THEN meet ragatha it would make sense how ragatha wouldn’t know about his normal personality idk just a thought
the fact that people keep interpreting the word "consequences" to be exactly and only "punishment" and knee-jerk responding to it with "why do you want my precious Bells Hells pookies punished" frankly says a lot about more about you than it does about those who feel that C3 as a narrative never followed through on consequences for anything
this is ESPECIALLY evident when it is remembered that we're all talking about a story and doing narrative analysis and media critique here, yes, all of us, even the casual commentaries, debriefs and post-mortems of the campaign is analysis. consequences. narrative follow through. the consequential story beat that carries the weight and concluded a prior set up. results, negative or positive or neutral, that are incurred as a consequence of what happened before. a continuity of narrative logic. actions that result in the expected and prior established weight and outcome. feeling like things consistently matter and affect things meaningfully on various levels, including the personal.
