#let's be real there is NOTHING and i mean NOTHING STRAIGHT about the way kdj describe yjh's looks

[cannot-be-cyn]

i wonder what's in yoo joonghyuk's mind when he read this lines straight from the manuscript: [Eyebrows seemingly drawn by a single, uninterrupted stroke of a famed artist's brush; a nose and a chin shaped in perfect angles that defied attempts to measure them through mere devices of men; a pair of deep eyes seemingly carved out of a beautiful jewel containing all the misfortunes found in the world.] … like man's waxing poetry about your handsome looks and you believe kim dokja is fucking straight? who you fooling, bakayero

[mutecrows]

I'm gonna actually do propaganda for real for the first time like I know the TMA fandom is huge, besties I get it, I love Jon too but listen to me… he does not have the autism swag levels of Yoo Joonghyuk especially bc YJH is just Like That as a built in character status not bc of outside forces (yes,yes, infodumping about emulsifiers hush. I was in the trenches too. The Eye had a big part in his statements being a fixation and you know it. That and the Web was there from like,,, young childhood.)

Listen, you should vote Yoo Joonghyuk

So first and foremost homie literally runs his whole life on scripts and with schedules that he doesn't like deviating from even going so far as to consider everything a lost cause because it has gone too far from the plan he had in his head. I'm talking full meltdown buddy. He was NOT happy and is never happy about the things changing too far from what he is planning it to be like when the script fails badly (usually leading to dying) he just edits them a bit and does it again like a trial run over and over until he gets that much of a step closer to perfecting it.

He's a gamer who can minmax his stats in his mind because his brain just clicks with it that well and he applies it to his own life too. Hell, he does it to other people too using the Sage's Eye skill he has. He literally strategizes all of his approaches because he needs to for his scripts to work and it's how he keeps himself stable

He's often blunt and almost crass in a way that is like totally missing social cues from others and he still bulldozes forward with that but since he's attractive the wider world just sees this colder exterior as him being cool or whatever (this happens for a lot of him actually, being attractive does a lot of heavy lifting in life). As a result though people do find him rude or just strange but really he does mean to be doing the best he just doesn't adapt well to deviations from what he is expecting things to be like. He will work HARD to get things back onto familiar tracks too

He's also a minimally verbal KING like yes girl, give us nothing!!! He will say bare minimum and instead just act because it's faster and easier, which his party gets used to eventually and just turn to Kim Dokja (another autism king tbh) to pick up where YJH left off. If he could get away with never talking he absolutely would too. This man does NOT want to talk and explain if he doesn't have to. In fact he repeatedly just thinks his words at KDJ when he suspects mind reading is a skill that Dokja has instead of verbally speaking to him. This isn't to say he doesn't talk and he does show to be good with words when he tries but I will once again point at the script usage I keep mentioning. He absolutely has practiced these speeches a ton by the time you get to them in the book.

When it comes to things he has down pat he is so straight forward with explaining it that he even teaches like the kids things and sees people progress in leaps and bounds from it (although this is arguably also because he redid this over and over as a regressor but we love him for it)

He also has the running theme of not eating food made by other people because it's not delicious' to which i say no! He doesn't want to explain to others his texture sensitivities and to get people off his back he just taught himself to cook. So now he makes bomb ass food that everyone else pines after because this autism king cracked the code on being social. I mean fr people won't treat you as too weird if the food you make is bangin and before someone says he doesn't cook for others, he literally makes a show of having a minor fit over it before he just lets it go and people can try it or 'have the leftovers'. I mean he lets KDJ have bits rather early on and this is someone who regularly ruins the plans he has and frustrates him to no end by having figured out ways to work his scripts into more efficient ways (allegedly)

And don't even get me started on the constant cleaning of his swords and such. Buddy, talk about a stim of fiddling with things he is shown to be messing with his swords so often when they aren't actively completing tasks it's practically his idle animation. The fact that it fits his practical approach to life with his scripts he uses because it means his weapons will be in good condition is just icing on the cake too.

He also straight up has tics that are so consistent people who know what to look for can read his moods off of them which is also iconic tbh… this along with his minimal affecting outside of it, which bc he's handsome people just look at him as being cool again, is something that is pointed out over and over in the novel and is depicted in the webtoon too it's just less evident bc of the visual medium.

When he does have his full meltdowns, blended with his other mental illnesses, they get so bad that he is regularly referred to as a sunfish bastard by KDJ because of how susceptible he is to being overloaded by the stress of big changes

So like i don't know how to avoid getting into spoilers here so don't read the rest of this if you haven't read the novel to completion

YJH really does end up getting pulled out of a number of meltdowns by KDJ and as a result does start to subconsciously rely on him for that and does actually have meltdowns specifically over the fact that KDJ isn't there as an anchor even tho he hadn't had him in any of the prior regressions. Regardless of this he trusts this other (autistic in a similar but more adaptably masking way) dude to edit the script he holds onto so strongly for him. Don't get me wrong he does repeatedly try to get back on familiar ground over and over but he does eventually trust KDJ to the point that when he is told by KDJ that he could rest and it would be handled for him he feels literal relief at being able to just… not have to be in control of himself for a bit.

He is NOT capable of handling losing things well either. This is like his biggest masking point, like he experienced his mentor dying and was like "i'm never coming back" because it was a point that was technically avoidable now that he had already learned the skills. Unlike his core party that he intentionally keeps as small as possible (4 maybe 5 core members, depending on the round) and even with that barrier he still starts masking HARD to avoid letting himself get hurt too badly. AND STILL he absolutely fails at that and it still gets to him over and over to the point of regular nightmares across his regressions and is a huge part of his depression

When he kills the only person that he thought truly understood him on a better level than the rest, not knowing he was just in a different realm bc KDJ is a slippery bastard who knows how to game the system, he continues to pay the subscription for their shared personal chat room for THREE YEARS to keep talking to him about things that were happening on earth. Homie was like "nah nah nah the standard is you die, i get very upset but dont say or show it, and you come back. This was NOT a discussed NOR APPROVED CHANGE to the routine KIM DOKJA." This gets him so keyed up, after watching KDJ die multiple times to keep everyone else alive, and he wants to have control over how things are going around him back SO badly that he was 100% fine with the entire party hating and not trusting him just to have a little bit of control back for his own mental and emotional security.

Hell, a version of YJH has his memories and some of his personality broken up into little kkomas (chibis) that are set up to handle different tasks, which is compartmentalizing tasks to make your brain run better at the most litersl sense, and the fact that the kkoma's themselves have little name tags to help differentiate is also great. They also have routine schedules they follow, which includes daily rotations of tasks like I'm talking "It's 81's day to cook" levels of LITERAL self scheduling to keep a routine. Arguably each of the kkomas could even be seen as different masking fronts too, since the regressions they represent each have different variations that cover a whole spectrum of personalities that work better in different situations, including which ones mesh better with different people. They keep notes that they share with each other.

Also the moment the scenarios were over and he wasn't able to use the scripts he had been fine tuning for hundreds of years, reliving the same years over and over, he stood there and went "I have no idea what to do now that my situation I've learned to handle has changed." Like when the standard for the world finally changed for the first time in (for him) centuries to not be the literal apocalypse he really was so lost he was ready to just quit everything (including living). The plan had been that after the scenarios ended the entire party would get a house with KDJ and all live together but this failed because to get out of the apocalypse for real KDJ did his own sacrificial bs. So now out of the apocalypse he already lost his newly found major anchor point and he wasn't able to ask "so what now" essentially. All he wanted was someone to tell him what he's supposed to do now because he doesn't know how to handle this absolutely massive change. He was so desperate that he literally regressed again, after swearing he wouldn't, to try and just get KDJ back as an anchor so he could have that plan back.

Anyways vote Yoo Joonghyuk, I'm begging

ROUND 2 PART 2

Yoo Joonghyuk X Jonathan Sims