#codename!bh/sigma

[baby-yeol-blog1]

On Codename!Chanyeol’s self esteem & character growth

So I’ve got this ask on CuriousCat about that infamous moment where Chanyeol was angry at Sigma and thought he was ‘out of his league’. And since my reply to the thing is very long, here you have the whole thing in case some of you enjoy reading story meta.

WARNINGS: Not spoilery if you’ve read until LOGIN 07 but meta (aka author’s opinion on a character’s backstory/canon interpretation of a character’s motivations). Also, it may have typos.

Codename is a fic in process with more than half still left to write. And Codename (especially the first arc) IS Chanyeol's story. He is the main PoV character and you get to see everything through his eyes. Everything from the city to the society to all the other characters, including Baekhyun. The narrator here is not omniscient - it is a third person voice, but it's a voice that's atuned to what Chanyeol feels and thinks and believes. This means this voice is accurate when it comes to Chanyeol's actual feelings, but it's not always reliable as a source of 100% objective facts. Now then, Chanyeol in this fic is a cyclic character when it comes to self-esteem. If you check what we know about him and his background story, we can see that: 1. He was born in a society where Destiny is considered a supreme force and made law by the government. This society classifies everyone according to the Fate that Dreamers see for them. That is what determines a person's worth, and the ones that have no known Destiny are basically worthless. 2. Dreamlessness is a heavy hit to everyone's self esteem. You're not told "hey, you're Dreamless" at birth. You grow up and watch your friends get letters while you don't. You wait every day for a message that never comes, and it gets worse the older you get, because people start to live their perfect lifes and you remain there, hopeless and hopeful and stuck in the middle of nowhere because you can't even get a (decent) job. You're a spare. You're no one. 3. Chanyeol has stated in several chapters that he doesn't exactly believe in the concept of Destiny. Despite this, he still has to live by it. This is not super explicitely explained in the fic itself because it is supposed to be seen between the lines, but Chanyeol has it hard whe the story starts. He barely manages to pay the rent of a tiny apartment, and he does it with the money his first tier, professional M.O.N.S.T.E.R team earns from sponsors. His teammates have lifes and jobs, but he solely relies in the money he earns from being one of the best in town in a MOBA game. And even that style of life is in danger, because in the first place his friends are starting to leave the team because other matters in his life are more important (see Suho in chapter 1), and on the other hand Chanyeol himself is getting old. Dreamlessness is excusable when you're 13, or 15, or even 17. At your late teens, people start to gossip. People's opinions will very much lead towards the negative if you're still Dreamless in your early twenties, and everyone will regard you as useless if you remain like that at age 25.

Chanyeol's 22 at the start of the story, and M.O.N.S.T.E.R fans consider the "Most Famous Dreamless Boy of the Dome" thing a funny little quirk, but that's not staying like that forever. So, summarizing, Chanyeol is fucked. All of this has an impact on Chanyeol's self-esteem. I said before that it's cyclical because there are periods when Chanyeol feels less worthy in general than what he actually is and other periods when he's very confident in his abilities. He has moments when he feels useless and is quite harsh in what he asks of himself and moments when he feels like the king of the world. The peaks of low self esteem tend to happen when he's faced with things he cannot control or that he fels he can't do well, and the high self esteem peaks happen when having to deal with things he controls. Things he's good at: M.O.N.S.T.E.R, Breaking, technological stuff. Things that he isn't good at: being a terrorist, fighting & shooting irl, fighting the Obelisk Chanyeol's life was going downhill when the story starts, but his universe did a whole 360 when Baekhyun/Sigma appeared and dragged him into a mess he hadn't asked for. It all was pretty shitty, but he knew what to expect. Suddenly, he's almost killed by blue ice inside a virtual world, then he's used and electrocuted by the boy he had just kissed, then he's captured by the government and basically erased from existence and sent to die, then saved by the boy who kissed him (who is a wanted terrorist btw) and turned into a terrorist himself. And after that he needs to lightspeed learn how to kick ass because he needs to do a lot of illegal stuff without being killed. Ah, and the Destiny system who fucked up his life is suddenly a lie ;) And instead of telling him, Mr. Sigma-the-asshole has kept quiet despite knowing all along. Chanyeol is out of his element (to be specific, he's miles away from everything he's ever known), and he can't help comparing himself with Baekhyun (aka the person who mostly works with him, the person he sees the most and the person he's recluctantly very physically attracted to). Baekhyun has been training for years and is fast and strong and lethal - and so openly confident about being so - and so Chanyeol tends to disregard his own efforts because he subconsciously compares himself with Baekhyun and he obviously loses.

Personality-wise, Baekhyun acts lke an asshole, and he's regarded as such not only by Chanyeol, but by the whole cast of characters, but he's obviously good at certain aspects of his job where Chanyeol feels he is lacking. This makes Chanyeol's opinion/feelings towards Baekhyun complicated, because he thinks he's one hell of a bastard, while being angry and disappointed at being used, while regarding him as a pro in  terms of being a rebel and involuntarily seeking his approval, while being sexually attracted to him and realizing that Baekhyun wants to do him but doesn't care for him that much as a person. At this stage of the story, ChanBaek are not romantically involved. Chanyeol doesn't look and Baekhyun and pins over him because of his unrequited love. Chanyeol is attracted but tired and done, and he considers Baekhyun is someone who is in a totally different level than his own - he's dangerous, and good at what he does; and they should be a team, but he's hiding things; and he's offering sex (which Chanyeol, or Chanyeol's body at least lol) wants, but he doesn't seem to care much for him as a person (which makes Chanyeol even more upset because hey, remember what i said about being Dreamless?). This is made worse by the fact that Baekhyun has used him to seek revenge for another person he DOES care for. Hence this piece of Chanyeol's dialogue, which by the way belongs to the same train of thought and should go together. [ Baekhyun wouldn’t understand. Baekhyun couldn’t. He’d lost things, perhaps, but that meant he'd had them in the first place. He was used, in fact, to get whatever he desired, under the rules he set. Chanyeol never got anything. Not a word, not a look. Not a secret, not a choice. Apparently, not an opinion either. “You want me,” Baekhyun said, fingers going to the string of his hoodie. He had pretty hands, a pretty face. He was absolutely out of Chanyeol’s league. “And you’re hot. And I offended you, didn’t I? So maybe I could do something for you to forgive me.”] Chanyeol is angry while he thinks this. He is not saying that Baekhyun is out of his league because he's too pretty and two lovely and too perfect for someone like him to love. He's saying it because Baekhyun is a top tier rebel, and it's all confident and obnoxiously charming, and has the upper hand in all that's going on, and will never (he thinks) care for him or consider him an equal. It feels like Baekhyun is in a whole different dimension. (And all this is a little bit fun, because it's true that Baekhyun is a bastard, but his opinion on Chanyeol and his skills has substantially changed in the last two/three chapters and has commented on how Chanyeol "is good" or "impresses him")

None of the characters in this universe (including Chanyeol himself) would believe or consider Chanyeol 'lucky' if Baekhyun liked him. My readers generally like Sigma as a character because he's complex, and umpredictable, and charming in his own twisted way and thus they want to know what more there is to him, but he's basically considered a (needed) pain in the ass by the whole Codename cast of characters. I don't know why, but people tend to think that there needs to be a "stronger"/"more dominant" character in every story. That, and that strength is related to how the amount of havoc the character in question wreaks. If he makes thinks explode, he's strong. If he shows vulnerability, he's weak. Why isn't Chanyeol "superior", exactly? Because he feels insecure about certain things? Because he smirks less than Sigma does? In chapter 1, Chanyeol is this guy who has been fucked by the Dreamer system and who keeps all his anger about it bottled up inside. A person who does nothing about his situation because it really feels like he //can't//, and who clings to the idea of being the very best at the game he plays (the same way he uses to let some of this anger out). He's the guy who gets easily deceived and manipulated by Baekhyun. By chapter 8, Chanyeol has: 1. Started to adapt to an environment he doesn't know. 2. Started physical training with a regular schedule (he used to have a gym pass. He never used it) 3. Learned to shoot decently in just a few weeks. 4. Participated in a potentially dangerous mission by choice. 5. Survived that mission without being captured. 6. Come up with a plan to infiltrate a government building so he can hack into their computer and Break into a potentially very deadly database. 8. Formulated the strategy for that plan and told Jongin that he wants to meet up with his friends. Now. 9. Told Baekhyun that he's shit at technology and that he's going to fail misserably if he doesn't tell him stuff. 10. Told Baekhyun in his face that he's done with him and that he needs to stop being a little shit because he needs Chanyeol. Chanyeol has gone from being resigned to his situation to taking a stance against the system that has wronged it. He's gone from being totally lost to acting as the main strategist in their infiltration plan. His strength is much more subtle than Sigma's general flashiness, but he has come to the point where he can sass the hell out of him and make Baekhyun shut up: ["Give me a computer that’s connected to the Obelisk outer network and I’ll Break in.” “Any idea of where to find one of those?” Chanyeol rose his eyebrows at Baekhyun. “Ah, I don’t know. I thought you were the one in charge of the plans?”]

The story is not even halfway and he's gone a long way since the start. What happens is that character arcs are gradual... and are supposed to be subtle. He's not going to wake up one day and start choking Obelisk soldiers with his bare fists, I'm afraid :_D ChanBaek's relationship is the same. Generally speaking, this is a rivals to lovers sort of story, so all the thing basically starts with sexual tension and then moves forward. Chanyeol doesn't exactly like Baekhyun - he 50% wants to punch him, 50% wants to make out with him (alternatively: he 50% wants Baekhyun's recognicion, 50% thinks he's a kamikaze asshole). Their relationship has also been evolving subtly from chapter 1, and since this is a ChanBaek fic, it's not a spoiler that they will fall for each other. This includes both Chanyeol falling for Baekhyun and Baekhyun falling for Chanyeol. So no, this is not geing to be a story where their relationship remains unbalanced. I've been writing this ship for five years and I've tried my best not to do that every single time. So if you want them to suffer because of love... it'll happen. It'll surely happen lol