#systematic-shark

Wangnan

how i feel about this character

He’s so underrated???? Like, if you think about it with the way TOG is constructed, the narrative is really split into two complimentary stories -- the story of Bam as an irregular introduced to the world of the Tower from outside, and the story of Wangnan who lives as part of the system. And like, obviously most of the stories are kind of a slow burn right now outside of Bam (when was the last time we had an update on Kun’s goals other than “follow Bam”? And yet everyone treats him as though he’s a protagonist. He is a main character, but he’s not a protagonist . . . . ) but Wangnan’s story is clearly meant to parallel Bam’s. Bam is the outsider’s perspective on the tower. Wangnan’s the insider (in more ways than one, since SIU has mentioned he knows a lot about the inside of the tower, too.) If people would just be a little bit patient. . .

But as soon as he does start being plot relevant, there are people bitching about how SIU is trying to “force” them to care about Wangnan like ? ? ? He’s been Bam’s foil the entire time guys.

ACTUALLY! That’s something that I haven’t talked about at all yet, but Wangnan really is Bam’s foil, in a similar way to how Rachel is Kun’s foil. Everyone’s impression of Bam has been “innocent ball of pure sunshine” on the second floor, but when we’re introduced to Bam again on the 20th floor as Viole, Wangnan is the one being the innocent ball of sunshine. He’s a little more cynical and tough at first, but his primary way of dealing with people is to be honest and optimistic. Like Bam in S1, he also relies a lot on quick thinking because he’s not as powerful as the people around him, and he blames himself when things go wrong. But Bam sticks to his guns even when it divides him from people -- he point blank tells Endorssi he won’t be her Servant in NHS because he needs Kaiser’s name too, and he tends to just flat out ignore people when he doesn’t like them, while Wangnan doesn’t care about dignity or anything of the sort -- as long as he gets what he wants in the end, he’s willing to lie, cheat, steal or beg.

The team up between Wangnan and Rachel now has a layer of depth I hadn’t thought about before. Hmm. . . . . Also, if Wangnan is Bam’s foil, I wonder if he’ll also receive a great many power ups in the next season. . . . Karaka’s super evil training?!

all the people I ship romantically with this character

E V E R Y O N E please love Wangnan he’s a good kid he’ll treat you write. Right.

I don’t really ship Wangnan/Ehwa because most of the shipping material I’ve seen for it seems to be along the lines of “let’s ignore how important Ehwa’s relationship with Bam has been to the narrative in order to ship Bam with Kun or Endorssi” pair the spares type deal? But I’ll talk about that with Ehwa’s section lolol. But like. . . honestly, Wangnan makes a good pairing with literally everyone. He’s just really genuine and real with people, and he brings out sides of them that you don’t really see anywhere else.

Kun? Brings out his vulnerability and shines light on his more insecure sides.

Rachel? A little antagonistic, but he, again, brings light to the sides of her that other people over look (granted, we haven’t seen a lot of this but the whole conversation about her tidying up a lot comes to light -- he noticed that and kind of tried to dig at her the way Kun was, but it’s not the kind of thing Kun would comment on, either. Kun doesn’t ask questions. Wangnan does lolol)

Karaka? Time to be a mentor figure for Wangnan, okay, I don’t make the rules.

Vicente? Tamed

Bam? Well he’s darn well the person who got Bam into a team again.

Cassano? Calling him out on his BS and making him rethink things. Hopefully that works out to the extent of Cassano saving Horyang. (Also, Cassano/Goseng/Horyang love triangle/team up would be hilarious, but that’s unrelated.)

Wangnan is just very refreshing for ships because he earnestly interacts with people, which, compared to Bam or Kun is really nice.

my non-romantic OTP for this character

Wangnan & Ehwa as teammates who have each other’s back is always nice to see!

Akraptor’s encouragement of Wangnan before was really nice too ;;

I ship Wangnan with being respected and cherished please and thank you he’s a good kid (he’s old enough to drink . . . . though i guess the drinking age in korea is different from what i’m used to haha)

my unpopular opinion about this character

 That he’s a protagonist and not a side character, evidently. . . . no one seems to understand this . . . . |||orz

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

 Man. . .at this point I just wanna learn more about the ring and the red light district? What is going on there?

But also please give Wangnan friends and blankets thanks TT_TT

Ehwa

how i feel about this character

 She’s such an angel and I’m so proud of her? She’s grown so much and she keeps growing, and I love her she deserves happiness and good things please give her happiness and good things ;A:

all the people I ship romantically with this character

Um. E-everyone. . .  Actually, now that I think about it I don’t have a whole lot of Ehwa ships. The only people her interactions with stand out to me right now are Bam, Wangnan and Bero Bero. I don’t ship her with Wangnan so much because it really feels like a lot of the time people are dismissing her relationship with Bam, like “Side characters should be with side characters!”

But her relationship with Bam is really super sweet? She started out initially harsh and untrusting with him, but has slowly become inspired by him, and wants to become stronger alongside him . . . . The moment when she thought to herself, “No. . . I should call him Bam” really got me straight in the feels. And Bam’s interactions with her are also very sweet -- he doesn’t ever seem put off by her tsundere moments or anything, and I think he kind of gets where she’s coming from, and he seems really comfortable around her.

I still low key ship her with Bero Bero, too. There’s just a fun, “I’m DEFINITELY just jealous of her beauty and TOTALLY NOT admiring her at all what are you talking about” dynamic, even if they haven’t seen each other in ages TT_TT

my non-romantic OTP for this character

I said before that I like Wangnan and Ehwa’s team up, but I also like her bonding with Bero Bero ;a;

my unpopular opinion about this character

She’s better than Endorssi, hands down.

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

Please bring Ehwa back to the main plot soon, SIU. Please. I miss her.

Rachel

how i feel about this character

Complicated. . . . On the one hand, she’s a lot of things that I didn’t know I needed re: female characters. She’s not pretty or talented or meek. She wants what she wants and she goes after it, but she’s not cool. I can also understand why she would leave Bam behind, even without the reveal of the whole “destiny” thing -- taking care of someone and raising someone and teaching them everything about the world, and doing it right, is a lot of work. It eats up the time and energy you have to be yourself, and here she is just finding a strange boy in a cave (or whatever happened there, seeking him out? Planning on assassinating him?) and presumably with her own dreams -- I can understand why she wouldn’t want Bam to keep clinging to her, and I can also understand why she wouldn’t be able to let him go all the way either. (And she can’t. Her speech with Kun and her expression after Bam said he understood they’d be enemies both confirm this -- but she’s sticking by her initial decision too. Rachel letting go of Bam is a long journey.)

But also. . . there are a lot of hints that the way she treated Bam sometimes was not very good. She tells him he’ll never be chosen, and that only chosen people can go up, she lies to him, she manipulates him . . . even discounting the heavy, plot stuff (pushing him to what seemed to be his death, selling him out to FUG, etc) -- and when she broke down and told him he should have been waiting for her in that cave the whole time. . .  I dunno. I think on some level, Rachel was legitimately abusive towards Bam. It could be me projecting onto Bam’s character with the things I’ve been through, or it could be genuinely where SIU is going with her character, but . . . it’s still my overall impression.

(Sometimes I feel like there’s a lot of pressure if you like Bam to also hate Rachel, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do that. She’s just small and sad in a big world that she’s not ready for, and we’ve all felt like that before, right?)

all the people i ship romantically with this character

Yura, Endorssi, Kun, Hoaqin . . . normally I don’t like rival-type ships but there’s two of those. . . I think they’re more satisfying with Rachel. With Kun it’s like an understated rivalry and subtle digs back and forth, and then with Endorssi there’s a power struggle that goes back and forth pretty well despite them both having different levels of experience. . . what a strange feeling.

Yura and Rachel just seem like a really cute romance. The couple that salts together stays together or whatever. They can be bitter together without feeling guilty or judged, and I think we all kind of need someone like that in our lives.

And Rachel and Hoaqin. . . it’s femmedom. That’s all. Rachel could put Hoaqin on a leash and he’d like it. I initially wrote “secretly like it” but honestly there is not “secret” he’d just outright make dirty comments about it constantly. No one would forget it except Rachel (?). It’s fun watching someone like Hoaqin (who is probably very adamant about being In Charge in a relationship) get a bit flustered by having someone else in charge lolol

my non-romantic OTP for this character

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I don’t think Rachel has any such person in her life. Maybe her relationship with Hwa Ryun? I like how Hwa Ryun is simultaneously very aware of Rachel’s mentality, but also kind of completely baffled like it. Yeah, I don’t understand Irregulars either, Hwa Ryun!

my unpopular opinion about this character

That she’s not inherently unforgivable for what she did to Bam, I guess. . . . ? I genuinely like her as a character and would probably try to befriend her if we ever met, though I don’t think she’d appreciate it lol. I also don’t think she’s as “noble” as some Rachel supporters like to make her out to be though. I think she’s a petty girl who doesn’t want to grow up, and because of that I imagine her story’s going to be harder on her than it needs to be. She causes a lot of her own suffering because of her negative outlook on things, and not because she doesn’t have a point when she says things like “Well, I got a shitty end of the stick here :/”.

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

I really hope she and Yura are able to have a happy relationship ;; I got kind of a bad feeling when Yura said “Rachel you came to save me!” though. . . like Yura might be idolizing Rachel too much, and that’ll piss Rachel off. Weird girl. . . . She doesn’t like when other people are “more special” but when she’s “special” to someone she hates that too.

Bam <3

how i feel about this character

Umm. . .well, we all kind of already know how I feel about Bam. . . . But I’m always okay with talking about how I feel about Bam too so like, I mean. . . 

I dunno, he’s probably the character I’ve connected to the most, like. . . ever. Our experiences in life aren’t one-for-one or anything, but I can relate to the sense of being raised in isolation, and having to accept someone else’s definition of me, and being used as a tool for revenge. I can understand being put on a pedestal and then thrown from it only to be put back on the pedestal by someone else. Seeing someone else go through it meant a lot.

And. . . Bam also is accepted for a lot of traits that I’ve typically had a hard time with. Like being stubborn and a little too blunt and I dunno. And he’s quiet and reserved, and it’s just. . . really nice to have him be the hero of the story, haha.

As for the rest of my feelings. . . I’m pretty vocal about being in love with him, and sometimes I have a lot of worries because of it. But ultimately I really like being in love with him and thinking about him, so . . . it should be fine, right? I feel like I’ve been growing a lot beside him lately, and it’s kind of a good feeling. . . I’ve never really been able to grow alongside anyone peacefully haha.

That probably says bad things about me . . . . orz

It’s a little silly, but I feel safer with Bam too, like he’d protect me if he could. . . I’m gonna stop now because it’s to embarrassing to say these things /)(\

all the people I ship romantically with this character

For reasons that are pretty straightforward since I feel so strongly about him, I’m probably most picky about Bam’s relationships than anyone else. Sometimes I worry that I just dislike certain ships with him because they’re popular, etc, but . . . I do like him with Ehwa (no. 1) and Yuri (this ship only started growing on me after their reunion though. I was always a bit mystified by it’s before, but I guess a lot of people in the fandom kind of project on Bam. I mean?? Hwa Ryun doesn’t even LIKE Bam and yet Hwa Ryun and Elaine both get brought up as part of being his harem, or candidates for being “the heroine”. Tch. It’s obviously Ehwa.

Anyway, I also ship Bam with Xia Xia like that’s my big Bam rarepair is with Xia Xia. So those three for the most part :|b But sometimes I really like exploring his relationship with Rachel from a more romantic perspective too? I feel like I’m a bit of a weirdo in that department though. . .  I don’t ship Bamchel from the perspective of “he and Rachel work out their differences and live happily ever after” but more in the “they had a really unhealthy borderline-abusive relationship in the past and sometimes that has romantic undertones to me” vein, and exploring that can be very cathartic for me.

I used to ship Bam/Kun but it hasn’t really had an impact on me emotionally since the end of the workshop battle. I keep hoping that they’re gonna get happier, but I can’t shake the feeling that SIU’s leading up to something v. Bad in the AA department.

Oh. . . and for some reason the idea of Bam/Hoaqin strikes me as hilarious too, but I feel like that would bother him. . . he’d definitely give me the side-eye over that. . . . .

my non-romantic OTP for this character

Everyone. Please everyone be friends with Bam he loves having friends.

my unpopular opinion about this character

He knows what sex is and how it works. :/ Everyone likes to be like “OOOOH HE’S SO INNOCENT” but like. He has a body that’s past puberty, so even if somehow miraculously absolutely 0 people every thought “hey, maybe we should give him The Talk” (Jinsung or Hwa Ryun at the very least would though? Especially since Jinsung starts of his relationship with Bam by being like “Do you want girls????”) I imagine when his body started doing that thing that bodies tend to do, he might, just maybe, have been like “So, uh. Why does my voice keep doing that -- that thing it just did it again” or like “Hey, I had this really weird dream????” And we know he was a bit of a late bloomer because literally everyone was like “but he’s so smol” on the floor of test, and then “OH he’s GROWN” after the time skip.

Like, there are physical aspects to having a body designed for sexual reproduction, and we generally pass that kind of information on to people, y’know? AND he didn’t bat an eye when Ehwa and Wangnan were being huge perverts the first time he met them, or seem at all confused when Ehwa insinuated that he’d want to have sex with her. . . . But there are people who make a big deal about how he doesn’t know aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanything about that like ? ? ?

And then there was one fic I found where it was like “Oh yeah, Bam accidentally spread rumors about him boning Jinsung because he didn’t understand this sexual slang lolol” and Bam is really clever and probably actually super good at word play? Rachel used to complain about him making games “take too long” because he wasn’t an easy opponent and did things that were unexpected . .  .yeah, he’s really straightforward and single-minded but he’s also pretty good at figuring things out!

Also, I think to an extent he’s purposefully a little distant with people, but that’s not really an unpopular opinion so much as a headcanon, I guess?

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

SIU please just let Bam be happy. .  . .TT-TT

More honestly, though, there’s a lot of possible directions I’d love to see Bam’s character take. Maybe that’s why I have so many selfship AUs. . . . except it’s obviously not because Bam in my selfship AUs always has pretty much the same personality and development. I can neither add more suffereing or take suffering away from him orz