anyways, here’s my take on sangwoo being “corrupted” by gihun when they were younger
growing up, i think gihun was a reckless child. he is canonically ludopathic, which typically tends to stem from a place of needing to stimulate the brain’s reward system. those with ludopathy also tend to engage in risky behaviors due to this need to fulfill this.
and because of this, i feel like he did dumb things as a child for those same reasons—to stimulate his reward system and create dopamine. these behaviors manifested in his adolescence in smaller ways: for example, getting into physical fights, smoking, etc. just generally risky behaviors with payoff at the time and later consequences.
sangwoo, on the other hand, as i’ve stated millions of times, feels inferior to gihun, seeing him as everything he wasn’t, ENVYING him. the two were obviously close, and not to mention considering gihun was older and universally given the role of taking care of him as his hyung, looking out for him, etc, just as an older friend is meant to do.
so sangwoo likely picked up some habits from him. the people you are around really do shape your actions, and it’s heavily implied that sangwoo and gihun were CLOSE close—childhood best friends.
because of this, i think sangwoo absorbed a lot of those traits in the moment. coming from a place of envy—‘i want to be like him to fill the things i cannot be’, admiration, and general subconscious. he wants to be like gihun, but he is also still his own person.
he’s already given these high expectations, too—sangwoo being the only child, only MALE child, and exceptionally intelligent in an impoverished family, gives him the role of ‘saving’ them from their poverty.
he’s seen as the one who is able to change that, get a good job, make some money, use his intelligence to free himself and his family from the dingy neighborhood they grew up in. so naturally he’s given a lot of accidental responsibility and ofc this puts lots of pressure on him!
so while trying to absorb gihun’s influence, he ends up absorbing the additional, ‘negative’ things—the risks, the danger, the things that he knows he shouldn’t be doing and yet he does them anyway. he ends up getting ‘corrupted’ in that sense, following gihun’s lead in these things.
a comment in canon i really really think people dont talk about enough is from gihun— paraphrased, he talks abt how sangwoo can be the corporal, and he can be the sergeant.
for reference:
corporal — responsible for training and standards of their soldiers to make sure they meet military standards and adequate job performance (“head of the body”)
sergeant — first-line leaders who oversee larger units, seen more as independent leaders who handle execution and planning
sergeant is always considered one rank higher than corporal.
so while that gihun praises and eulogizes sangwoo, he doesn’t submit to him; although i feel this should be known especially considering his attitude towards sangwoo going to snu with his. help. that helps back up that gihun is moreso the one running this rodeo, NOT sangwoo. sangwoo is under gihun. (oh my.. sorry what)
so, i’ve blabbered for a while… what is this conclusion i’ve come to?
i think that sangwoo picked up bad habits from gihun, and was “corrupted” by him in a sense. one primary example of this is smoking—as i wrote in one of my fics, gihun and sangwoo smoked together once when they were teens, and sangwoo slowly got hooked, not just because of how it felt, but because of the subconscious associations that it brought (gihun). apart from the pressing homosexuality, i also believe that is why sangwoo would have absolutely let gihun take his virginity.
i also think sangwoo is a very self-destructive person, so engaging in these behaviors would fill that self-sabotaging hole that exists inside him. it brings him so-called catharsis while breaking him down even more and destroying him, and he enjoys it, in a twisted sense.