#saeran ae

[schmellows]

Happiness grows when shared.

(Though Icecream doesn't)

[k4txlulzz]

[not a ship post.]

mystic messenger 707 after ending secret endings are better than whatever happens with the twins in another story . saeran is allowed to be human and not a perfect little baby boy who is hyper-dependent on mc(the girl who he met a few days ago) . he gets rehabilitated by his twin brother who is the one person who has and will always understand him most(they are a lot more similar and mirror each other more than some ppl think). people say this saeran doesn't have enough agency but truth is he was not in the right state to make decisions and in ray's route and after ending it's just mc doing it instead of saeyoung anyway. again, saeyoung is the person who knows whats best for him, not mc. additionally, seven goes through exact same mental struggles as his brother(example: suicidal tendencies + inferiority and guilt complexes) and its BECAUSE of the fact that he overcame them that he can reassure his brother properly. furthermore, saeran mirrors his twin's way of thinking when he basically asks himself "do i deserve this good ending?"

this route also has the most correct characterization of seven that, unlike another story stuff(ray AE especially lol), does not paint saeyoung as the aggressive bad boy twin . that whole thing with him being feral when it comes to protecting his brother and standing up to the agency + his dad + v is something i do love but it is, again, used to make him "the angry troublemaker one" . he gets tortured for two weeks straight for god's sake and saeran not only isnt allowed to have a proper reaction to it but sae just quickly recovers like nothing AND is "not nice" for not forgiving the dude who just did all that to him, apparently😭to give cheritz the benefit of the doubt, this maybe could be chalked up to seven thinking lowly of himself again but that's debatable

secret ending choi twins>>>>>>>>>

even though i love them being sweet in another story and i still think it is a very happy ending for twins, it isn't the right characterization

[k4txlulzz]

i like 707😭i understand the whole thing with the agency but why does he suddenly hate the name now ... its an easteregg to an error code that with its meaning fits his whole meta plot and reset theory too😔

Some more thoughts bc this angst is sickening! 🤪

This line makes me want to vomit 🤢 Daddy-son time? Omgggg

I KNEW IT WAS BASED OFF OF 007

I have decided that I hate this look 😬 Sorry, honey

I'm just over here praying that the power of love will lead me to a good end!! ;w;

[liptauer]

Have you gotten everything you ever wanted?

No. But once I got very close

[dailysaeran]

Maid VAE Saeran changing out of Ray's My Melody costume bc that was not him but Kuromi is<3 Based on the Sanrio collab chapter in the maid AU fic by @marshmallowprotection !!

[password-door-lock]

“Saeyoung might get cold,” Saeran muses, “While you’re escaping with him tonight.”

You glance around out of habit, making sure that Rika and V aren’t within earshot before you speak. “Have you seen his jacket anywhere around here?” You know that Saeyoung treasures his black and yellow hoodie, because he used to wear it every day. 

“Well…” Now it’s Saeran’s turn to glance around the room, “You could always take a look. Maybe Rika stashed it somewhere.”

Despite the heaviness of the situation, you can’t help but return Saeran’s smile. “Are you suggesting I go through her stuff?” 

Saeran shrugs, looking sheepish. “Anything for Saeyoung.” 

He’s trying to keep the mood light, but you can tell he’s worried. Your escape might take a while, and the night might be chilly. Moreover, if Saeyoung was kidnapped from his house, you have no idea whether it’ll be safe for him to return to it even once he escapes— and even if he is able to return, he might not be willing, if the resources that he needs to help Saeran are located at C&R headquarters. It might be good for him to have something warm to wear, just in case. “Okay, anything for Saeyoung,” you agree, “Where would Rika keep a sweatshirt?”

Saeran considers it. “Maybe… near where she’s keeping Saeyoung? Since she wanted us to stay here, she must have got some stuff for us.” He sounds calm, but you can tell he’s tense. “I’d go over there myself, but…” 

But he is chained to the wall, in a very deliberate position, so that he can’t get anywhere near his brother. Rika must have suspected that Saeran would try to remove Saeyoung’s IV and free him from the sleeping draft under which she is keeping him. “I’ll be right back.” If Rika tries to confront you again, you can just tell her that Saeran was cold and asked you to look for a sweatshirt he could put on. That way, neither of the twins will face any retribution for your actions. 

There is, indeed, a small chest of drawers located near the bed where Saeyoung is sleeping. In order to access it, you have to bend down, close enough to whisper to your friend without his brother hearing. “We’re gonna get you out of here,” you promise, “And then we’re gonna come back for Saeran.” 

You don’t care what the plan is. You’re not leaving your love behind in this horrible place— but you do understand that this first step is necessary to rescue Saeyoung. In the top drawer, you find T-shirts, socks, and underwear. In the second drawer, you find a few pairs of pants. But in the bottom drawer, you are able to locate a few warmer-looking garments. One of them is clearly intended for Saeyoung— it’s pale green, with a yellow stripe across the middle and a darker green hood. You remove it from the drawer. His favorite hoodie is nowhere to be found; you hope it didn’t get misplaced when Saeyoung was being moved from Rika’s apartment to V’s house. 

There’s also a brown sweater vest, which you imagine is supposed to be for Saeran. What Rika is doing is horrible, but she has a pretty good handle on the twins’ personal styles. Maybe she thought she could make them feel more at home by providing things they’d like. If only she would understand that neither brother will ever truly feel at home until both of them are free… You shake your head, dismissing the thought for now as you slide both garments into your bag.

“Did you find anything, my sweet?” Saeran asks as you pad back over. 

“Mhm,” you withdraw the green sweatshirt. “For Saeyoung. It looks like it would fit him, so he definitely won’t get cold.”

“What else did you grab?” 

You sigh, knowing that you can’t get anything past Saeran. “A sweater for you.”

“I’m not cold right now, my love,” he assures you with a smile. “But thank you. I’ll put it on if I need to.”

“No,” you shake your head. “I’m taking it with me— for when we rescue you. You might get cold, too.” You don’t know whether you’ll be able to stop back at your place, where Saeran left his blue sweater, before you come back for him. Preferably, you’ll be able to turn around and leave as soon as you get Saeyoung to safety.

“MC…” Saeran grabs your hand. “I know you don’t want to leave me, but—”

“Saeran,” you cut him off, not wanting to hear it. “Baby.” 

“I have to stay here to protect you and Saeyoung,” he reminds you, for what feels like the hundredth time today. “There’s no guarantee that I’ll make it out of here. You have to focus on saving yourself, and looking after my brother. That’s how I’ll be able to live on, even if I’m not here to give my love to you myself.” 

But you can be just as stubborn as Saeran is. You’ll find a way to come back for him, whether it fits in with his master plan or not. You hold up the sweater. “For when you’re free.” 

Saeran sighs heavily. “Alright, my love.” His smile is weak, but it’s still present. “For if I’m free.”

[haine-kleine]

as someone who has been playing mysme since the release and developed a hyperfixation as soon as i first laid eyes on the edgy mysterious twink, i just want to say how annoying i find the soft retcon of Saeran's redesign.

the deal with his eye colour and hair colour has never been explained throughout the 9 years of the game's existence so the fandom developed their own crazy theories about the elixir genetically changing his appearance, which i was sure was fanon bullshit up until the Ray After Ending release.

and you know what, okay, him still looking like Ray/Unknown/Evil!Saeran in the AE might be chalked down to very little time passing since he was rescued from the cult. what i find more annoying is the new official arts consistently depicting him with the white hair in what is clearly intended as post-canon content. do they really think we won't be able to tell the twins apart if they both had red hair???

just look at the 707 AE Saeran. what a beautiful little tomato. the red hair is such a clear and natural sign of him accepting both himself and Saeyoung and healing from the years of brainwashing and hatred.

does the red colour clash with his pale skin? maybe, a little. but should you really pick aesthetics over essence when you are writing a story about IDENTICAL TWINS? a story where you have already defined the white haired, ghostly look as an unhealthy state of the character whose happy ending is about accepting his past and reuniting with his twin brother, whom he had been brainwashed to hate by the designated Evil Manipulating Story Villain?

in the originally released After Story for Saeran, following 707's route good ending, he looks like a washed out, unhealthily pale copy of Saeyoung. he is meant to look a little off-putting, because that's the literal visual depiction of his physical and mental state, which was amazing writing!

this is the healthy, default state of both characters, because they are identical twins. it was their separation that had started the tragic backstory for both Saeran and 707. on top of lying to the boys and forcibly separating them for no real reason other than Evulz™, Rika had altered Saeran's physical appearance, erasing all physical likeness to Saeyoung that she could. it doesn't really matter whether she had convinced Saeran that it would be safer for him to look different, if she had asked him to dye his hair and start wearing colored contacts or if she had painstakingly developed a chemical formula that would permanently change his eye and hair colour, as ridiculous as that particular theory is, the point is that looking the way Unknown does would certainly be associated by Saeran as a very dark place in his life. that would be the time when he had less agency over himself than he ever did, and we are talking about a person who was often physically restricted, starved and deprived of water by their primary caretaker since they were a child. other than MC in the Ray route, Saeyoung would be the only person who had ever cared about him since he was born, and Rika manipulating him into despising his brother, from Saeran's point of view after he learns the truth and has the time and safe space to self-reflect would be especially cruel. Saeran is naturally a very affectionate and loyal to a fault person, who is extremely insecure and believes he doesn't have anything else to offer to the person he cares about other than his loyalty.

for this reason, i firmly believe that whatever is the actual reason behind his hair and eye colour, Saeran absolutely would dye his hair red if anything just to show Saeyoung physical evidence of his forgiveness. my headcanon is that even if his hair does keep naturally growing out white, he would dye it for the rest of his life, so that his past as Rika's brainwashed lapdog can be left behind him, instead of buried in the nearest mirror.

for his eye colour situation, i still don't believe the colour was permanently changed, unless Rika was fucked up enough to make him go through a surgery treatment for that, but this is an angsty scenario for another day. my interpretation is that both twins have horrible eyesight from staring into phone and computer screens for 75% of their waking time, but unlike Saeyoung who had bitten the bullet and accepted he is blind without having glasses on, Saeran had started wearing colored contacts with prescription. considering this change had happened while under Rika's care, it's pretty obvious she would be the one to buy him the contacts, so the 'mint eye' fits the whole idea. this leaves several new points for interpretation though. first, Rika is the one who taught both twins to hack, so i am choosing to believe miss girl also has terrible eyesight but wears eye contacts because she is obsessed with always looking her absolute best and avoids touching glasses for this reason. Saeyoung's glasses being a fashion statement (as goofy as they may be) aside, knowing how awful Saeran was at taking care of himself while living in the cult, i am absolutely sure the 'damn bitch you live like this?' boy may have kept forgetting to take his contacts out before sleep but would keep pushing against the irritation and eye tiredness, because it would never occur to him to just. buy a pair of glasses.

which is how we end up with this scenario.

knowing the Choi twins' particular brand of soap opera drama, the whole thing would boil down to a misunderstanding. Saeran, who had never been taught actual self-care skills because all of his caretakers were either intent on murdering him, never learned these skills themselves, or some combination of both, would just keep wearing his old colored contacts even past the expiration date, because there is no Rika to order him a new pair and because it never occurs to him that his bad eyesight can be helped with clear contacts or a pair of glasses. Saeyoung, who is still a dedicated expert at self-loathing, would interpret Saeran's continued use of the mint colored contacts as yet another way to show him how much he hates him, refusing to share an eye colour with his twin unless he is asleep. the misunderstanding would continue on and on without either mentioning anything until Saeran's eyes are going red and he can't blink without crying so Saeyoung rushes him to an ophthalmologist and then MC bonks both of them over the head for their shared refusal to mention anything.

on a less related note but since i am writing a whole essay bitching about character design, let me once again mention Ray's route redesign. what was even the reason oh my god. he was already perfectly fine as Unknown. he is still Saeyoung's identical twin, why give him the huge moe anime girl eyes? i see the dedication to woobifying him as much as possible, but he was already Mr Woobie Worldwide as kid!Saeran, like??

look at this absolute ray of sunshine (ha). i promise we won't care for him any less if his eyes aren't twice are huge as his tsundere twin brother.

look at these pictures and tell me they didn't give my poor man a whole cosmetic surgery while preparing him for the Ray route. the game was never famous for their consistent art style, but at the very least, looking at the old art, you could tell the two characters were clearly intended as identical twins, when put side by side. from the Ray route onwards, Saeran is consistently depicted as Saeyoung's uwu bug eyed cutie little bwother :3

the one thing i do like about the chronological progression of his character design is the pipeline from Ray/Evil!Saeran to Unknown. since more time has passed in the main route, there are telling signs that Rika is not as controlling of Saeran as she was two years ago. this is starkly highlighted by her abandoning him/forcing him out of the cult in one of Yoosung's bad endings, but also pretty prominent in his physical appearance. Ray still believed himself to be ugly, but he was putting consistent effort into his appearance, in both identities. his hair is perfectly bleached and brushed, he is wearing those formal attires, even the Saeran identity is running around spreading mayhem in a perfectly tailored and ironed black suit.

two years later, Saeran is going on his infiltration missions in a leather jacket cuntily leaning off his tattooed shoulder (which i am 85% sure was his own idea that Rika wasn't involved in) with studded bracelets and leather chokers. knowing what we know of Rika, it's very hard for me to imagine her approving of this kind of style lmao. his hair is also in a much worse condition, having not seen brush in ages and not even wild in the style Ray route!Saeran's was or Saeyoung's naturally is, slightly longer, visibly damaged. the bleach job is a mess, leaving him with the famous pink tips that Ray was clearly missing.

the one thing i hate however is that in V's after ending, where he supposedly rescues Saeran and miraculously takes such a good care of him that it works better than therapy... his hair is still fucking white. this version of Saeran wanted to reunite with his brother more than any others did, and had more time to himself after being rescued from Mint Eye, and for some reason he or V just kept bleaching his hair? i can hear the choir of 'it's not that deep', but personally? yes, it is that deep. all of the non-Mint Eye endings for Saeran are inherently bound to be about change, and for a sweet uwu twin who is very explicitly transformed by their tragic backstory narrative, in a visual novel game i can't believe we only have two (2) cgs of adult Saeran with his natural hair colour, one of which doesn't even come from the in-game content.

Cheritz please release my boy from the contract forbidding him to change his appearance ever since he got his own route.

In conclusion, red haired!golden eyed!Saeran deserves rights and to be seen more

[cephydeluxe]

TW: eye strain, blood, no visible gore but eye injury implied (also rambling in the tags)

Early work in progress painting of v,,,, the final piece won’t look anything like this (…..maybe) but I was messing with layer settings and hard mix is serving ,,,,,

tbh I’m starting 2 understand V h8ters now,,, mf needs 2 get the FUCK outta my head before I do something crazy 🫣🫣🫣🫣🫣 (((draw him more****

[yoosung-ah]

1. nothing could be more suspicious than that hair of yours. I swear this woman's hair gets bigger every time I see her. is that all real, or extensions? if it's real, then drop that haircare routine sis

2. if you choose the first one, Rika accuses you of being a pervert. she's not entirely wrong, but also, why did Cheritz even give us that option to begin with? this is not how I wanted to see him on his knees. bad vibes

3. top 10 saddest screenshots ever taken. literally just put me out of my misery

4. to draw this interaction this way was such a choice. I love how it looks both homoerotic and like a weeb's rendition of a biblical painting using their favourite characters from different franchises

5. first, I'm a fan of how this looks like the cover of one of those cheesy romance novels that grandmas read, and second, literally impossible. cruel of him and the writers to even suggest such a thing. I'm too selfish and don't have the coping skills or neurological genetics to do what you're asking of me

6. the absolute purity that radiates from this is unmatched. I almost don't want to be with him because he's too good for anyone. also babe did you break into V's studio to take this photo with the professional backdrop and everything? because I support that kind of behaviour

7. let's all together beat him up, then. if, like discussed in your AE, "there's no right or wrong," then violence should be acceptable. him and his security guard can't take us all on, and aren't you all about self-sacrifice? and protecting the twins? where's that attitude now?? you're already going to jail anyway. surely you have some repressed anger that you can make use of. Rika and I have enough crazy between us to equate to 3 men in battle too, like let's go

8. same energy as "now I feel weird" or "my head hurts" from days 8 and 9... sir, is this your tsundere way of saying you have feelings for me? I'm flattered, but as you can see, I already have a bf

9. we get called a goddess by both Chois. Cheritz saw the feedback from AS and Yoosung's route and made good use of it

10. "but not me" same. let me know if you need my help in any way. like how V "helped" Rika after her "skirmish" with your mom

... this feels oddly meta. as if Cheritz was like "we know you sickos have fantasized about ending up with both of them, so here you go" and you get to be with just Saeran in the alternative end. here it feels like Saeran's your husband, but Saeyoung's your boyfriend. like why they both holding bouquets, with us in the middle? I thought Saeyoung was looking at his brother's happiness, but he's actually looking at us

in addition to Chairman Han, I am petitioning Cheritz to also give us a Driver Kim and Prime Minister route. the former has a heart of gold but his voice and cadence makes me think he may have k!lled someone in the past, and I know that the latter has, but red flags never stopped us before

[littleaipom]

i somehow never found a place to squeeze this drawing into a post, what a shame. [EDIT: no i actually did post this a few years ago! whoops my bad.] it's self-insert fluff of me hanging out with saeran. we are gardening and watching tr0llhunters together with my cat c:

[corpiote]

replaying saeran's route brought back all my original anger and disgust for rika

[marshmallowprotection]

Hi Kait, how are you? I'm curious.... I wonder if you had an idea or imagined what the story of Saeran's After Ending would be like before it's official release in 2020. If you already had a plot I'd like to know haha.

Hello! I do. It's not easy to scroll through my blog for that, though. It's buried under years of content so let me help you out! I had a long time to gauge what I wanted and speculated out of Saeran's After Ending... so, of course, there is a long post about it.

[Here's my initial reaction to the Release Post.]

[Here's my Analysis on what I thought the RAE would be like!]

[Here's my Reaction Series to the actual RAE.]

[anarkiworld-blog]

Re-reading old rants about people claiming Ray's route was "better" than the SEs and these certainly didn't age well after Ray's AE came out lol

[gureshinlover]

The fact that he actually went for it in the saeran AE years later 💀

replace trump with jumin

[capmangacap]

[password-door-lock]

Oh god we’re that couple….