#from strangers to idol and fan to acquaintances to friends with a vibe to friends with textually acknowledged romantic tension.

[rappaccini]

do you ever think about how in 1970 on earth 616 gwen stacy and hobie brown first meet when he blasts through her living room window in a spider-man costume.

do you ever think about how gwen nearly escapes her narrative as the doomed good girlfriend by fleeing to london and the event that gets her on the plane is hobie standing guard outside her apartment in his prowler costume because he's worried spider-man will get her killed, and how that's hobie's first attempt at escaping his narrative as a reluctant villain. do you ever think about how he's right, because when gwen's ultimately drawn back to new york, she's murdered a few months later and it's arguably spider-man's fault.

do you ever think about how on earth 138, the world where hobie's anger at systemic inequality is validated as his parallels to peter parker are finally expanded into making him the spider-man, gwen stacy, rock icon, is hobie's idol whose music gave him a creative outlet for his anger, the language to articulate it and a community to support and be supported by, (whose murder probably radicalized him even further) and therefore is arguably the architect of the revolution he starts

do you ever think about how on earth 65, the world where gwen's anger at being denied respect and agency is validated as her white feminist tendencies are called out and deconstructed, gwen's radicalization arc begins with hobie blasting her in the face with spray paint and calling her on her girlboss bullshit (which she accepts and commits to fixing), and ends with hobie having quietly watched her redemption for a year and concluding that she's grown and changed into such a genuine hero that he decides to memorialize her

do you ever think about how in the worlds where they get to be the heroes, where hobie keeps the costume instead of borrowing it and it's his from the start, where gwen gets a life defined by herself and not her boyfriend, their alter egos' ideologies are shaped by their worlds' versions of each other and if not for having met each other they might never have become heroes at all

do you ever think about how as soon as spider-gwen and spider-hobie became aware of each other's existence they became fast friends in web warriors and hobie starts treating gwen like a peer instead of a love interest within one issue instead of years of publication like miles and peter, they were stuck to each other like glue during the battle in spidergeddon and were flirting in the corner of spider-brit's funeral, promising to be there for each other, and then they never met again

do you ever think about how gwen-65 and hobie-138 have both been informed by powerful multiversal beings that they're doomed to fates they'd both hate, but he's doomed to die young and have his memory disrespected posthumously by capitalists and she's doomed to live long after losing everything that makes her who she is for a life as spider-man's wife and babymaker, and they've both fully internalized their fates given how hobie doesn't care about his own self-preservation and gwen's coming untethered from her world and being pressured into 616, the home of the guy she's going to be forced into a romance with if she's there long enough. they can be heroes, but only for so long before something stops them, and their legacies will undo everything they stood for.

do you ever think about how in atsv, which came out exactly fifty years after the night gwen stacy died, gwen stacy and hobie brown are the closest they've ever been in any canon yet, so close that they may not be a couple but they have a shitload of chemistry and just mentioning each other makes gwen's love interest sweat, that they built that relationship in london and their bond is what sets gwen free from the spider-society, makes it possible to rebuild her personal life, return to her homeworld where she's the main character of her own story, and escape her narrative but in btsv gwen will almost inevitably give in to her role of Miles's Love Interest by the end and he will be expected to cheerlead them

do you ever think about how in every other universe where gwen and hobie have a significant interaction, every single time they get closer and closer to permanently changing their narratives for the better as they get closer and closer to each other. idk man i do.

[sternbilder]

Hi!! Stumbled on your blog via the buried stars tag and I'd like to say thank you so much for the kr>eng translations! There aren't many english-speaking fans so I was happy to read about the game & its characters. I was wondering, what do all the characters call each other in Korean? Or what honorifics they use? I could hear it in the audio sometimes (Gyu-hyuk: "Do-yoon-ah", or I think Seil: "Inha-ssi" ?) but I didn't catch all of them. Google tells me some of it is based off of (1/2)

(2/2) Google tells me some of it is based off of respect, friendship/closeness, or just being older/younger than one another, but I'm still new to the intricacies of what it implies about the characters' relationships and how their individual personalities are. If it isn't too much trouble, I'd love to know ^^

Hello!! You're very welcome and in fact thank you for the question, I'm always receptive to more excuses to talk about this game!

It seems like you already have some context on rules surrounding Korean honorifics. There is a lot of nuance, obviously, but to put it simply...Yes, I'd say the speech patterns the cast (particularly, the TOP5—the others are a bit more complicated) uses are what you'd see in a casual social setting between people who already know each other somewhat, but aren't necessarily friends, which is what I think I would expect from a group of twentysomethings who probably had a chance to bond socially as a cohort throughout the whole audition process (it's explained in the Q&A that they lived together in a dorm for most of the show, too). And as you've pointed out the rules there I would say are much more tied to age and closeness. I'd generally characterize their speech patterns as informal, but polite—basically, you have to use the polite form with people who are older than you, but you can use casual speech (banmal) with people who are the same age or younger. The exception is if you are close enough with someone that you mutually decide it's OK to drop honorifics despite the age difference. More on that later.

The order of the age of each of the main cast are as follows: Seungyeon (33), Juyoung (28), Gyuhyuk (27), Doyoon and Inha (25), Seil (24), and Hyesung (20). So with no other caveats we'd expect, for example, Doyoon to use polite form with Juyoung and Gyuhyuk but not with Inha and Hyesung, etc. Now, with that as the basis, here are some notes based on what I can remember, though disclaimer that my memory isn't perfect, and there are also things I might have missed because I haven't done a full playthrough yet with Korean text.

(Character spoilers for the "Other" section at the end; otherwise a few minor spoilers)

TOP5

Juyoung (28)

Juyoung is the oldest of the main cast, so she uses banmal with pretty much everyone and refers to them by name, or name + ah/ya (which is the casual vocative marker), and it's perfectly acceptable for her to do so.

The rest of the TOP5 call her 언니/누나 (unni/noona, lit. "older sister" but more generally used to refer to any slightly older female acquaintance; which one is used depends on the speaker's gender). They also sometimes call her 영이 언니/누나 (Young-i unni/noona) for short, which I thought was cute. There's actually a Q&A question that asked about this because it is a very familiar/affectionate nickname, and the director explained that Juyoung asked the others to call her that because she was afraid of seeming unapproachable due to her age and because of the fact that she was a former idol.

Gyuhyuk (27)

As the second oldest, I believe he uses banmal with everyone but Juyoung. The younger male characters all call him 형 (hyung, lit. "older brother", see above), though I can't seem to remember Inha calling him 오빠 (oppa). I might be projecting that assumption onto her based on her somewhat brash personality, since 오빠 can come off as a bit...Girlish? Cutesy? Flirtatious? in certain contexts? Idk.

Doyoon (25)

What's notable about Doyoon is that he uses the polite form with Juyoung, but not Gyuhyuk. He calls Gyuhyuk 형 (hyung), of course, but he uses the casual form, which suggests that they're close enough with each other that they've already agreed to drop formalities. Their first rapport event gives me the sense that they're especially close, too, compared to the other contestants (as does just like...waves in their general direction, but anyway,)

Inha (25)

Inha is the same age as Doyoon, so you would also expect her to use polite form with Juyoung and Gyuhyuk. However, she doesn't with either of them IIRC.

As for Juyoung, I don't remember how much of this came through in the text of the game itself, but I would guess they were probably already pretty close in a way similar to Doyoon and Gyuhyuk were. At the very least, I think I remember one of the Q&A answers indicating that they kept in touch very frequently after the events of the game.

I don't really remember too many interactions between Inha and Gyuhyuk, tbh. I do recall that she (not sure if any others do) refers to him as 규 (Gyu) at least once, which I think is adorable, LMAO. This might indicate that they may have been on close enough terms to use casual speech? But then again, she did seem to resent Gyuhyuk at least a little bit for the scholarship thing, and according to the Q&A she took much longer than Juyoung and Doyoon to see him again after the game, so??? She could just be kind of disrespectful like that, which...Kinda tracks, honestly??? 🤷‍♀️Like I said, I don't remember too much about these two, so don't take my word on this.

Hyesung (20)

Hyesung is the youngest, so you would expect him to use polite speech with everyone, but he, uh, does not. With anyone. LMAO. Maybe he's just super tight with everyone, but something tells me it's more because he's a rude little shit who's just Like That. (I mean, he uses banmal with Seil, who does hate his guts, so.) He does call everyone 형/누나 (hyung/noona), though, at least—though, now that I think about it, Seil might be an exception to that, LOL.

Since he's the youngest, everyone just calls him Hyesung.

Also, this is tangential, but I also just wanted to throw in that Hyesung notably has a slight "old man" dialect in that he sometimes uses expressions and slang that you would expect from the older generation, because growing up his only friends were the other vendors at his mom's fish market. This is unrelated to politeness, but it does come off as really funny considering how young he is, and definitely gives his speech a unique vibe.

Staff

Seil (24)

The speech patterns between Seil and the TOP5 are pretty similar to speech patterns within TOP5 itself, which is to say, fairly informal but still polite. He uses polite form with everyone older than him, and uses banmal with Hyseung. I actually wouldn't necessarily have expected this to be the case since he technically has more of a professional relationship to the TOP5 than they do with each other (so I wouldn't have been surprised if he actually used formal speech, rather than just polite), but it's probably because he's in that same age range and because he was the staff member who was closest to them socially.

I believe you are correct that he calls Inha, and Inha alone, -씨 (-ssi), which is actually formal, rather than simply polite. Probably just indicating his high level of admiration for her in particular.

The rest of the main cast just call him Seil. Hyesung also occasionally calls Seil 세일 FD님 (Seil FD-nim) which is technically extremely formal, but obviously said in sarcasm.

Seungyeon (33)

I believe she calls everyone by their full name, and uses casual speech with them. Makes sense. She's the boss.

Everyone else calls her PD님 (PD-nim, formal). Including, notably, Hyesung. AFAICR Seungyeon is the only character Hyesung shows even an ounce of deference toward in this game. 😛

Other

Suchang (27) & Suyeon (18)

AFAIK Suchang only really has in-game interactions with Doyoon and Suyeon, and Suyeon only has interactions with Suchang, who she of course calls 오빠 (oppa), in the familial sense. Though IIRC at the very end she does once refer to Doyoon as 그분 (geubun, lit. "that person") and 도윤님 (Doyoon-nim), both of which are extremely formal/deferential in tone but in kind of a "little girl talks about her crush as if they were Prince Charming" sort of way...Which causes Suchang to hilariously go into overprotective/jealous older brother mode.

The Ha siblings use casual speech with each other, which is standard among siblings. However, Suchang also talks down to Doyoon, which is pretty audacious of him considering they're strangers—he basically talks to Doyoon as if they're already friends. He's kind of an audacious guy in general, though, so I'd say that kind of fits his character.

Doyoon, on the other hand, being the polite young man that he is, uses polite speech with Suchang. There's a funny scene where he accidentally slips up and uses banmal, and then immediately gets called out by Suchang, who chews him out for talking down to someone older than him. (Though ofc Doyoon had no way of knowing this, and also, Suchang shouldn't be using banmal with a stranger in the first place.) At the very end of the true ending when they finally meet, Doyoon actually takes it up a level and calls Suchang 수창씨 (Suchang-ssi) but Suchang tells him to drop it and just call him 형 (hyung). It's sweet.