#the true answer is that he is selfish enough to prioritize himself over LITERALLY anyone else

[talonpaw]

ashfur is so funny. WHAT is his beef with old people

#the true answer is that he is selfish enough to prioritize himself over LITERALLY anyone else #and the elders are an easy target for ashfur to display his newfound power and authority #(the true TRUE answer is that warriors villains default to hating old people out of principle) #(…because that’s how you KNOW they’re evil!) #talon reads tbc #the silent thaw

[ineffable-endearments]

Psycho-philosophy & the angels, fallen or not (part I)

I swear I wasn’t taking any mind-altering substances while I wrote this. It’s very heavy and I’m not sure anyone will enjoy it, but I felt like I had to get it out.

And now it’s too long to be just one part. Here is the first part anyway.

It’s established that Aziraphale and Crowley symbolize the “opposing” sides of human nature, but I have a pretty difficult time with believing that they actually represent “good” and “evil.” THEY believe they represent “good” and “evil.” But even before the two of them develop their humanity by spending time on Earth, before they start to affect each other, they both have philosophies that are far more complicated than just “do good things/be helpful” or “do bad things/be hurtful.”

Before you can be “good,” you need a definition of “good.” And the same goes for “evil.” And I absolutely do not think that the characters’ personal definitions of “good” and “evil” match with the narrative’s definitions of “good” and “evil” (which I’m not strictly sure it really has). So...what might they represent more closely?

In extremely broad terms based more in dictionary definitions than in the finer points of academic philosophy, I’d cast Crowley as the individualist and Aziraphale as the collectivist. Individualism is the prioritizing of the individual’s interests over a group’s interests. Collectivism is the prioritizing of a group’s interests over the individual’s interests.

Obviously, this is heavily informed by abuse from their Sides. Hell motivates its demons to behave by making them fear for their own souls using physical intimidation. Temptations are also usually focused on taking advantage of some selfish motivation in humans. Heaven, meanwhile, motivates its angels with the promise of the Greater Good, intimidates its angels with the belief that disobedience is out of line with the Greater Good, and shames its angels for acting with any sort of personal interest.

“What?!” you say. You’re going to cast Crowley, the guy who initially hatched the plan to try to save the world at great personal risk, as the self-centered individualist, and Aziraphale, the hedonist who’s just about ready to watch the world burn at Heaven’s command until Crowley buys him lunch, as the collectivist one?!

Well...in a way. Because while the characters believe they represent these ideas, and while they genuinely buy into them on some level, the whole point is that the two viewpoints taken to extremes end up looking awfully similar. They also rely on each other, no matter how much they try not to.

I should clarify a few things before arguing any more.

The perceived “selflessness” of collectivism is sometimes idealized, and that’s why it maps onto the supposed “goodness” of Heaven, but it doesn’t actually mean kindness, compassion, or goodness. It means not considering oneself - including one’s own identity, preferences, or moral conscience. Likewise, the perceived “selfishness” of individualism is often vilified and gets cast as evil, which is why it maps onto Hell, but all it really means is placing one’s own perspective at the utmost importance, which can be beneficial depending on who’s doing it.

I’ve seen some incredibly smart commentary on the Good Omens book being a just-barely-post-Cold War novel comparing, among other things, Capitalism (heavy on individualism) and Communism (heavy on collectivism). I thought the analysis I read was brilliant, it told me a lot that I had not thought of before, and I would love to read more. But that’s not what I want to talk about here.

In this essay, I’m really sticking to the terms “individualism” and “collectivism” as they inform the psychologies of individual people (Crowley and Aziraphale). I’m trying to have a discussion that I think is important, because it’s important for humans to have a healthy notion of how individuals fit into their relationships and communities, but my commentary is much more vague and not tied to a specific moment in history. I’m frankly not very qualified to talk about the Cold War, anyway.

Crowley and Aziraphale are a couple of paradoxes. At least, they’re paradoxes until they discover Earth as their true allegiance, at which time they just become two balanced angels of neither Heaven nor Hell.

CROWLEY’S PHILOSOPHY

Crowley knows he’s supposed to represent Hell and the kind of self-interested desperation that drives people to damnation - a kind of extreme individualism. But he’s been condensed into an Earthly being who’s formed relationships and preferences and loves and, gosh, although he wouldn’t admit it, a conscience. Unlike Aziraphale, he’s much more OK with this sense of identity, because individualism is not incompatible with being, well, an individual. But he does struggle with the fact that he’s supposed to be working toward The End Of All Things for his own self-preservation when his real wish is for The Continuation Of All Things.

Most of Crowley’s decisions are framed from his own personal opinions. He approaches the world as he sees fit, which includes accepting his job of damning souls because he has to or he’ll get destroyed. He does what he needs to survive, so you could say he “answers to the higher power of Hell for self-interested reasons,” but for moral purposes, Crowley does not answer to anyone. Interestingly, though, he DOES have a conscience based in his own feelings.

By personality (not because he serves some moral power but because it’s just his personal preference), Crowley does not like certain kinds of cruelty. He’s willing to do his job, but he doesn’t enjoy taking free will away from people, for example. And in most cases, outright violence (like Hastur turning into a pile of worms and eating the telemarketers alive) is not something Crowley is into, either. In this case, the fact that he’s self-motivated means he has enough imagination to grasp what it’s like to be another person, and while he’s willing to upset people/give people the opportunity to damn themselves/generally be inconsiderate in public, Crowley simply does not enjoy the experience of destroying others without giving them a choice.

Oh, and we can’t forget: “You’re supposed to test them, but not to destruction.” It’s Crowley’s personal feelings that lead him to believe Armageddon shouldn’t happen, and Crowley’s personal feelings that lead him to act out against Hell.

With all that said, Crowley feels a profound love for the world and Aziraphale (whether he’ll admit it or not) because he really enjoys it on Earth, and he wants to keep enjoying it. Therefore, all of his “individualism” ends up working in the favor of the “greater good” anyway. In the end, Crowley temporarily loses hope and stops fighting, but by this point, he’s already had his positive effect.

It’s kind of like Terry Pratchett’s powerful quotation about witches being selfish. “All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany's Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours!” Maybe it’s not so intentional on Crowley’s part, but the outcome of his love for Earth and his bond with Aziraphale ends up serving the interests of others.

Crowley’s journey involves a less drastic change than Aziraphale’s. Once he thinks it’s possible to fight for the world and survive, he doesn’t have a single qualm about it, because he answers to his own standards, not anyone else’s.

AZIRAPHALE’S PHILOSOPHY

Aziraphale, on the other hand, has to basically figure out that it’s a good thing to use his own judgment instead of Heaven’s. In doing so, he has to rewrite his belief system and even rework his identity.

Aziraphale knows he’s supposed to represent the collective, Heaven, the Greater Good. But he’s been condensed into an Earthly being who’s formed relationships and preferences and loves and a conscience and an identity of his own. At first, this feels wrong to him, because many of his personal interests go against Heaven’s. It’s why he’s so incredibly good at repressing and denying; he has this sense of Self but doesn’t believe he’s entitled to it and doesn’t realize there is any way to separate from Heaven, so as far as he knows, to allow this Self to grow and flourish would ultimately be extremely painful and potentially dangerous. You can tell the other angels aren’t happy with his sense of self, either, as far as he allows it to go (see: any interaction in the bookshop, Gabriel’s behavior over the sushi).

Aziraphale is so oriented toward the Heavenly collective that he literally denies himself his own judgments, his own opinions. He’s convinced that Heaven is the Greater Good, so he accepts that as reality no matter how absurdly wrong their actions might seem to someone with an iota of common sense. He has not been allowed to have an opinion on it, and he will not form one now. He does intensely enjoy performing altruism and does not approve of Heaven’s plans to drown all of Mesopotamia and turn Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, but he will even push aside the satisfaction of kindness and the fear of cruelty if he’s told that his feelings don’t fit within the Great Plan.

It’s important to note that as far as Aziraphale believes, the existence of Hell and the work that Crowley is doing for Hell is in fact part of the Great Plan. He says as much to the Archangels when they bully him outside his bookshop.

Aziraphale is enthusiastic and adoring about life on Earth and about humans - and about Crowley! And oh, he does indulge. But he sees this all in a rather passive way, at least at first. He is simply enjoying the world and allowing the Great Plan to unfold. He does not think he has the right or ability to defend the world from Heaven’s judgment, even though he wants to. So, like Crowley’s self-orientation coming full circle to serve the interests of others, Aziraphale’s orientation toward the collective comes full circle to become very self-serving.

THE TWO TOGETHER

Enter Crowley’s judgment. Crowley is really fantastic company, but I think the specific thing he did in the long run was to help Aziraphale see that his own desires and judgments matter. Even when Aziraphale temporarily disavowed their relationship, Crowley’s influence was strong - would the Aziraphale who was standing on the Wall of Eden, or the Aziraphale who witnessed the Great Flood, have chased Gabriel around asking if the war was necessary, or would he have called the Metatron to argue everyone could be saved? Even when Aziraphale doesn’t actually ask questions, these interactions are an assertion of Aziraphale’s own feelings and judgments when he’s being told to be quiet and fall in line. And I really do not think he would have made these assertions before his long Arrangement with Crowley. In this way, Crowley gave Aziraphale the world and the gift of Being Himself.

As for Crowley, he doesn’t care about any Great Plan and thinks Heaven’s will is positively odious, but Aziraphale is convinced that the cosmic dance between the two of them is just ineffable. By playing along with that notion, Crowley allows it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The meaning of Crowley’s existence goes from “just make everyone as miserable as possible” to “balance out Aziraphale” which really means “create a world that doesn’t suck as much as Heaven or Hell, which are both insufferable.” In this way, Aziraphale gave Crowley the world and the gift of Being Part of Something.

#good omens #good omens spoilers

[thenexusofsouls]

Were Natasha and Steve ever a thing? The other day I re-watched Captain America the Winter Soldier and there was a lot of lip staring from Nat... maybe she simply thinks he's handsome (I mean DUHHH) but I don't know, she looked at his lips a lot.

{i am the caretaker of souls} Wow................ I never thought anybody would ever ask this, haha. I honestly never thought I would have to whip out this big, messy ball of headcanons, and I almost don’t want to, heh. Because it’s just so far in left field and I feel like hardcore Natasha fans are gonna be like what are you even doing with her? I have an admittedly weird interpretation of Nat (or at least I feel like it’s weird), and really all of my MCU muses I feel are very canon divergent from the originals. The short answer to your question is no, Natasha and Steve were never a thing... if “a thing” means anything romantic or sexual. There has never been anything, there will never be anything. And if I was smart, I would stop there. But I’m not, haha, and I’m gonna tip over the whole can of headcanon beans right now. LONG.... ahead. And crazy, heh.

My version of Natasha is MCU only, because I have not read her comics in any detail, nor have I read the surrounding comics for people who are integral in her life in the comics (e.g. Bucky). Because really any upstanding and thorough version of Natasha in my opinion should include Bucky as a major ship, if not the only major ship. So therefore my version of her is admittedly truncated and lacking in the ship department (she’s not shipped with anyone in any great detail or meaningful way in my opinion), and is MCU only. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have feelings for people, it just means she doesn’t act on them, or if she did, it didn’t go anywhere.

My Natasha feels so much more than is immediately noticeable or perceivable to most people. What I mean is, she feels a whole lot about a lot of things, events, and people, that she then recognizes needs to be left unsaid. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t still feel those things with intensity, she just understands that they need to be left alone and not acted on. An example of this was her early feelings for Clint. Yes, she loved him. Yes, she loves him still. But that love has changed forms over the years from something she might have wanted to be more romantic in nature to a friendship. Despite how she felt for him, Natasha recognized that they were better suited to remain friends. Thus, she never acted on her feelings, and certainly after Clint began seeing Laura, she never mentioned them. She never will. Because it needs to be left unsaid. By the time of Endgame, she still loves Clint, but it’s changed into platonic love, a change she actively worked to accomplish within herself over the years, because that’s what it needed to be.

Her second would-be ship in the MCU was Bruce Banner. This ship was doomed from the start because Bruce and Natasha place vastly different things as their priorities. Bruce focuses on himself. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or that he’s selfish, that’s just how his world works. He focuses on the moral, legal, and collateral damage aspects of him turning green, on the way turning green makes him feel, on the way he feels afterwards, and on what that means for him and his life going forward. Those were all major issues he wrestled with at the time of Ultron, when Natasha tried to confess her feelings for him. Natasha, on the other hand, has always and will always place other people, the world, and the collective good ahead of her own wants, needs, desires, etc. No matter what she wants and how important it is to her, she will always prioritize what needs to be done for a mission at hand, for the fate of the world, or for the safety of her comrades or innocent lives. Even if it goes against what she wants more than anything. Because, deep down, there is nothing she wants more than to be a good person and to be part of good forces in the world.

This is not a selfish thing, like oh I want fame or accolades or to be a big cool superhero, but rather it’s a nature deep down inside her that she cannot ignore and that cannot be overwritten by all the Red Room brainwashing in the world. That drive to bring about good, positive, life-preserving change in the world will always be Natasha’s compass, even if her methods and her own alignment are tilted more towards neutral than lawful. My Natasha is of Neutral Good alignment with True Neutral tendencies, meaning that on the Lawful/Chaotic scale, she is Neutral, and on the Good/Evil scale, she is Good with Neutral tendencies. So she will oscillate between adhering to laws or rules, disregarding them entirely, or skirting them somewhere in the middle, depending upon what she’s trying to do and why. That’s the Lawful/Evil scale. Then on the Good/Evil scale, she is Good the vast majority of the time, Neutral sometimes, and never Evil. A caveat to be added here is that she is never Evil as long as she is in full control of her true nature, so anything directed by the Red Room while she was still being influenced by their attempts at brainwashing might have been under a different temporary alignment.

Okay, back to Bruce now (I promise I am getting to Steve, heh, I’m just taking this opportunity to spill everything about my Nat’s ships XD, and setting all of this up makes explaining her complex relationship with Steve a bit easier). I don’t pretend to understand him very well as a character at all and I honest don’t like him very much, but in my mind, he seems to have a Lawful Neutral with Good tendencies alignment. So that means that he is far more inclined to do things lawfully or by-the-book than Natasha is, and he is skewed more Neutral than Good. He does care about casualties when he turns green, and that’s where the Good tendencies come from, but largely he’s neutral. He cares most about avoiding that terrible feeling he gets after turning green. He wants to reduce his discomfort and embarrassment and shame. That’s what most important to him. So the reason why Bruce x Natasha would never ever have worked is that he is more inwardly focused on himself than he is on the impact he could make on the world if he let go of some of that myopic focus on his own feelings. Natasha, on the other hand, is more focused on her responsibility to the world, her impact on it, how she can change it for the better, and on removing that red in her ledger by working to make herself a better person.

Take their final encounter together before Bruce makes the decision to cut ties with her and the Avengers in Ultron, at least for the immediate future... He wants her to run away with him, in the middle of a job, one that might determine the literal fate of the entire planet. He could do that, conscience-free, because to him leaving behind the battlefield and turning green in favor of having some semblance of a normal life is what matters most. Natasha respond with, “I adore you, but I need the other guy.” In other words, I have feeling for you too but right now, we have a job to do. She can put off her own wants and needs until later in favor of what she views in more important. Bruce... can’t do that for her. He realizes that if he stays with Natasha, he stays with the Avengers, and as long as he stays with them, he will never be able to leave behind the shame, pain, and guilt of turning green. So he breaks it off. And that hurt Nat... a lot.

So Clint and Bruce are past loves of Nat’s in my MCU canon of her. Since they didn’t work out she has painstakingly morphed her feelings for them into friendship, and there they will stay. Steve........ is a similar and yet different story. My version of Natasha has feelings for Steve, but she will never tell him that. Fortunately for her, he has no clue and doesn’t seem to be able to get one, haha. She thinks he’s fairly good looking but that’s not the reason why she’s attracted to him. Natasha doesn’t need looks to love someone at all. The reason she’s attracted to him is the same reason why she knows it would never work... he’s too good for her. Now I don’t mean in the self-worth, sense. Natasha has some self-esteem issues regarding what she’s done in her past, but other than that, she’s very confident in who she is. No, I mean in the very literal alignment sense. He’s literally too Good for her, heh. Even though Natasha is Good, she has Neutral tendencies, and even just that much is enough to make her incompatible with Steve.

Steve may be Neutral with regard to the Lawful/Chaotic scale (as seen in Civil War), but he has always been Good. Paladin level Good. Natasha... is not that. She can’t ever be that. But she admires it greatly. She’s attracted to it. She would love to be that herself. And let me say, Natasha doesn’t have a type, heh. If you look at the people she’s loved, Clint and Bruce and Steve... and it never happened in the MCU but I can see her still loving Bucky too... those are all really different people, personality and alignment-wise. Natasha loves the person, not the type. With Steve, she loves that he has been able to maintain the same moral compass through everything he’s been through and seen, she loves his stubbornness and determination, and she loves the lengths he goes to in order to protect others, whether they’re his best friend or some little kid he doesn’t even know. And it’s not like Steve doesn’t have his arrogant, defiant, misguided, or pigheaded moments, haha, because he does, but Natasha loves the person he is... very much.

So why hasn’t she said anything to him? Why didn’t she give it a shot with him like she did with Bruce? A couple reasons. First, yeah he’s too Good for her. She knows that he would have a lot of problems with any number of ways she handles and views any number of things, heh. They would clash too much on methods, issues, and reasons why they do things, and that kind of constant clashing would lead to an eventual animosity Natasha would never want to develop between her and Steve. Second, Steve isn’t looking, heh. Why? Because he wants Peggy. Nat isn’t Peggy. Not even close. They couldn’t be more different in a multitude of ways, and the ways in which they’re similar aren’t enough, and frankly, Nat wouldn’t want to be a Peggy-substitute. Steve is in love with someone else, and whether he can be with the one he loves or not doesn’t even enter into things for Nat. His heart lies elsewhere, and that makes him off limits. Nat respects that, regardless of how she feels. *shrugs* And that’s that, basically. It shouldn’t be a thing, so Nat makes sure it’s not. Like I said up there, my Nat has a very solid ability to wall off how she feels about a thing, situation, or person and never let it see the light of day if she thinks it ought never to be said. Does it hurt? Yes. Does she cry about this and other things sometimes when she’s alone? Yes. And then she pulls herself together and does what she needs to do. Walling off her emotions isn’t just a coping mechanism for Nat, it’s a well-honed and necessary skill she employs.

Okay if any Natasha fans are still reading at this point and haven’t torn out their hair yet, I’ll really set fire to this dumpster of headcanons by sharing... that... a strange reaction I had after watching Endgame was to write little fanfics about things that bothered me in the MCU thus far and just... not put any restraint or constraints on them, haha. What do I mean by that? Okay well usually when I write a fanfic, I put constraints on them as far as what I’m allowed to write. For example... nothing so out of canon as to be stupidly whacky. Hulk cannot suddenly read minds, Tony can’t fly without his suit, you know, nothing downright dumb. Also nothing so out of character emotionally or personality-wise as to just be ludicrous. Because the point is to write a good quality fic that, while it may deviate from canon, should still seem like it fits within the fictional world and the characters’ core personalities. Well... there’s another reason I write fanfics... or heavily inspired original works, for that matter... and that’s to get out emotion. I call them “garbage stories.” My first published book was a “garbage story,” and quite honestly, that’s why it sucked so much haha. But I digress. Garbage stories are fics or original stories that I write because I’m hurting and I need creative cathartic release. Like... I read a book or saw a movie that hurt me, haha, and I need to squeeze out the hurt through writing. After Endgame, I wrote a number of garbage stories, some as little oneshots, some as starters on here, some with friends off Tumblr, but all were to just fix or smooth over things that bothered me.

For example, I wrote something that saved Tony, heh. Basically, Wanda was able to keep him alive with her magic long enough for emergency help to get to him and stabilize him. I’m not saying he was in great shape, but if I can save Pietro from ten gunshot wounds, some of which hit major arteries and organs, I can save Tony from getting fried by cosmic energy, haha. I also wrote a thing in which Wanda basically prevents Endgame and the snap from even happening, because she chose to focus 100% of her power on Thanos instead of dividing it between him and Vision, allowing her to get the better of him long enough for her teammates to get the gauntlet off of him. It left her exhausted and actually injured (she was bleeding from her nose and ears after the effort and was unconscious), but I think she would have lived. I wrote it as a starter that could be taken up as either a Wanda or a Vision, but I think it was so outlandish that there were no takers, heh. That’s perfectly okay. The point is that it’s “garbage” writing, meant to heal the soul but not necessarily make any sense, lol. But ANYWAY... this was the mindset I was in after Endgame, just... fix my pain!

So... I wrote a garbage story about Nat and Steve. Basically... Nat does her whole sacrifice herself for the soul stone thing... and because she was actually clinically dead for several minutes, it works, but Clint recovers her body and brings her back. (Don’t think too much about it, it’s not gonna make sense, just let it go, haha.) Nat is understandably fucked up. Broken bones, spinal injury, internal bleeding, a skull fracture, the works. But she has moments where she’s conscious. During a moment in which Steve (who didn’t go back in time because I was also fixing that with this fic as well haha) was at her beside telling her that he didn’t want her to be alone, a throwback to what she said to him in Civil War when Peggy passed away, Natasha... who thinks 100% that she’s going to die... confesses to Steve that she loves him. It just one of those moments of weakness where she needed to get it off her chest. All indications were that she was not going to survive, so she felt safe in telling him. But then... she lives. And it’s awkward. It’s out of the bag now and she can’t take it back and everything between them now is going to change, likely for the worse. Everything hits her, from the pain of her injuries to the emotion of the past five years and certainly the past several days, and she just breaks down when she sees him again. In the middle of a cringeworthingly tearful and awkward apology to him, Nat stops when Steve takes her hand and gives it a little squeeze, whispering. “It’s okay, Nat.” And that’s how it ends. There’s no clear answer on how he’s going to handle it because there doesn’t need to be. He’s just... not bothered by it at all.

At the time I wrote it, it did a lot for me emotionally. I thought it was really nice. But as time went on and outrage grew over the canon MCU handling of Steve’s and Natasha’s endings, I started to think that what I wrote was just a mess, heh. It didn’t fix or help anything, it just made it worse. So... I deleted it. I regret that I did, because I’ve kept worse things I’ve written before and even if I never had any intention of showing it to anyone, I should have just kept it for myself. *shrugs* Oh well.

And. That. Was probably. More. Than you EVER wanted to hear on this topic. XD I’m so sorry. This turned into a ranting meta about nothing. Um... but hopefully I at least answered your original question? I tried! XD

[sage-nebula]

Hello! I hope that I'm not bothering you! I was wondering if you would please be willing to share your thought process/reasons for putting Yoosung in Slytherin? Because honestly this is literally the best placement for him that I have seen!?! And I would love to know a bit more of your headcannons about it if you were willing to share? Once again sorry for the bother! Please feel free to ignore this message! Have a nice day!

You’re not bothering me at all! I’m always happy to receive nice messages like this. Anyway, sure, I don’t mind sharing my thoughts on Slytherin!Yoosung in the least bit.

First, to get it out of the way, let’s remember the traits of Slytherin House:

Ambition

Ruthlessness

Resourcefulness / Cunning

A desire to look out for / loyalty to one’s own, prioritizing them above all others

The first three traits are well known and talked about at length (though, I argue, often misunderstood), while the last one isn’t as much. Nonetheless, that last one is referenced in Slytherin House’s old welcome letter on Pottermore, and it’s also exhibited time and again with pretty much every Slytherin throughout the series. Even the rare Slytherin who is wholly selfish (Voldemort and Umbridge) still cares for their own, it’s just that “their own” refers to themselves and no one else. They’ve cut everyone else out of their lives.

Regardless, these are the traits of Slytherin House. As a reminder, for someone to be placed in a House they have to both exhibit and value these qualities. I’ve seen some people Sorting purely based on what qualities a character exhibits, and others who claim that it’s purely about values. No, both of those assertions are wrong. You have to embody and value qualities for them to count. It’s not either-or, it’s both. With that said, I firmly believe that Yoosung embodies and values all of the qualities listed above and then some.

Ambition ---

This one might seem a bit odd, given that when we meet Yoosung in the narrative (in both the Original and Another Story) he seems to be wasting his life away playing LOLOL. Yoosung is a university student, but he doesn’t seem to care very much about his studies; he has been offered an internship with Jumin’s company, C&R, but he doesn’t feel like pursuing it, and when he does consider it, it’s only so that he can make money to buy more skins in LOLOL, something which understandably doesn’t impress Jumin very much. However, while this might make it seem as though Yoosung isn’t very ambitious, I would argue that not only does he still show some ambition during this time in his life, but also point out that this is actually an anomaly for him, caused by his grief over Rika’s death and his inability to move on from it.

Prior to the canon narrative, Yoosung worked his ass off in high school so that he could get into a prestigious university to eventually pursue veterinary medicine. I can’t say how easy or difficult it is to pursue veterinary medicine in South Korea, but I can say that here in the States it’s one of the most difficult fields to get into. Veterinary school is extremely selective and picky about those who are admitted, I believe even more so than human medicine schools are. If you want to go into veterinary medicine, you have to really put in the effort in every aspect of your academic career, most often beginning with high school. The selection process might be different in South Korea, but we nonetheless know that Yoosung did work extremely hard to get into university when he was in high school. He used to be a model student who, on top of his studies, also volunteered in community service on top of everything he did for RFA. True, a great deal of this was a result of how inspired he felt by Rika, but nonetheless, he had enough ambition to want to reach heights that would not only make her proud, but could also potentially make her life better (since he decided to pursue vet med after her dog, Sally, died). 

When Rika died, however, grief hit Yoosung hard, and he lost focus and direction in his life. Nonetheless, I would argue that his ambition hasn’t entirely left him, but has instead shifted. Yoosung turned to LOLOL in order to deal with his grief, and in that, he has channeled all of his ambition into LOLOL. Remember, ambition doesn’t necessarily have to pertain to something that other people see as glamorous or worthwhile; the type of ambition that Slytherins value, rather, is personal ambition. Whereas a Hufflepuff might aspire to do something for their community, or a Gryffindor might aspire to do something for the greater good, Slytherins aspire to do things that will please themselves. Yes, some Slytherins want glory, and want people to shower them in accolades and praise; but even if they want that, it’s less because they want to impress others, and more because they want that sense of self-satisfaction. A Slytherin’s ambition is very personal. Thus, Yoosung’s ambition to be the number one LOLOL player to ever exist is a very Slytherin ambition, as is his single-minded focus on trying to do everything he can in order to achieve that goal (e.g. pursuing a C&R internship to buy new skins, rather than because he actually wants to work there). 

Additionally, Yoosung values ambition. Part of why Rika was such an inspiration to him is because she had such big dreams of helping others, and actively worked in order to see her dreams come to fruition. Although Yoosung is envious of Jumin’s wealth, he still looks upon Jumin favorably for his successes with C&R. He says that he understands Saeyoung’s desire to live vicariously through Zen, because he, too, wants to be able to stand at the top, but feels that’s beyond him. And while he seems to have lost his drive for his studies, this is something that he hints bothers him, that he’s upset by even as he tries to hide it. Yoosung holds ambitious people in high esteem; he admires those who have personal ambition because that is a quality that he himself finds admirable. Having such a favorable view of personal ambition like this is definitely a Slytherin trait.

Ruthlessness ---

Whatever Yoosung wants, Yoosung gets. And if he doesn’t get it, then he does not go quietly into the good night about it.

People look upon ruthless individuals as being brutal, vicious, icy, and heartless. However, I disagree. Being ruthless means being determined to the point where you will not let anyone or anything stand in your way, regardless of the consequences. It means being willing to mow down whoever and whatever in order to get what you want, everything else and sacrifices be damned. And while that might seem heartless, remember that:

A willingness to do this does not always mean there is malicious intent, i.e., even if a Slytherin hurts others in their ruthless desire to get what they want, they may not realize that they’re hurting others

Even if they do realize it, it doesn’t mean they’re happy about it

Keep in mind, people of any House can be Determinators. What sets a Slytherin apart is their willingness to take a “the ends justify the means” approach. It doesn’t mean that they’re heartless, cruel, or intentionally malicious; it just means that they’re so dead set on getting what they want that they’re willing to go through whoever or whatever to get it, even if they know that what they’re doing isn’t necessarily right (or even if they accidentally hurt others in the process).

Yoosung demonstrates ruthlessness of this nature, particularly in his Bad Endings, and especially when it comes to Rika.

Yoosung, in his desire to satisfy himself with answers regarding Rika’s apparent suicide (and, in Another Story, her continued life) shows time and again that he’s willing to go to whatever lengths he has to in order to get what he wants. He berates V at every opportunity, and goes so far as to blame him for Rika’s suicide in Another Story. In the “yandere Yoosung” Bad Ending, he all but barrels down the door to Saeyoung’s house, and threatens to destroy all of his equipment unless he tells Yoosung the address of Rika’s old apartment so that he can get to MC. To flip back over to Another Story again, Zen has to repeatedly wrench his phone away from him and lock him out of rooms in order to stop him from verbally assaulting MC, Saeyoung, V, and whoever else. The boy does not quit. And he makes it clear, in these endings, that even though people like Zen and Saeyoung are his friends---that even though he has cared about them for some time, on some level---if he needs to go through them to get what he wants, he will. He won’t “stay still,” as the characters in Mystic Messenger so often put it. He won’t hold back. He will scream, kick, destroy things, and physically fight them if it means getting what he wants. Of course he would never hurt them ordinarily . . . but particularly in his darkest hours, his ruthless nature comes out in full force. He’s not willing to hold back.

(Thankfully, he’s also small, so Zen and Saeyoung are able to defend themselves, but still.)

Of course, he has to admire ruthlessness as well---and I believe he does. When Saeyoung realizes that he can no longer trust V in good conscience in his own route, Yoosung throws his support behind Saeyoung with great gusto, only rescinding it when he realizes that Saeyoung is going to cut him off as well. He’s perfectly fine with however ruthless Saeyoung decides to be so long as Saeyoung doesn’t cut him out. And while this leads more into the very last quality, Yoosung also shows a reluctance to condemn pretty much anything Rika does, believing that she must have a reason---and if she has a reason, well, the ends justify the means, don’t they? To a Slytherin’s mind, they do.

Resourcefulness / Cunning ---

Yoosung, as part of being the more “normal, boy next door” guy in the cast, isn’t the most crafty or resourceful person in the RFA. In fact, when V talks about those who are most capable of getting things done, he names Saeyoung and Jumin, since Saeyoung “has the skills, and Jumin has the resources to make things happen.” However, although Yoosung isn’t the most brilliant character in the cast, it’s still undeniable that he shows resourcefulness, cunning, and the type of mindset that lets him find the fastest way from Point A to Point B (with Point A being where he is, and Point B being what he wants). 

To reference the examples above, Yoosung shows that not only is he willing to go through characters like Saeyoung or Zen to get what he wants, but he’s also willing to circumnavigate them completely. In his Bad End, he only starts threatening the safety of Saeyoung’s equipment because he doesn’t feel that he can get the address to the apartment any other way. In Another Story, there are multiple instances of him stealing Zen’s phone in order to interrogate MC and other characters over the chat and text message. In Saeyoung’s route, when his mother is staying with him, he goes behind her back repeatedly not only to check on things in the RFA, but also so that he can play LOLOL and goof off right under her nose, and so on and so forth. These might seem like silly things, but they show that Yoosung has something of a crafty mindset and that he isn’t afraid to deceive others in order to find a way around whatever is impeding his progress (which again, feeds right back into his ruthlessness). As one last example on that, remember that he does fool Rika in the last scenes of Another Story by playing innocent to get close to her, only to arrest her and ruin her plans at the last second. Again, that’s a bit of cunning coming through, that he was able to deceive her and knew just how to do it.

And once again, this is something that he values in others. Yoosung expresses envy at the abilities of others to get things done quite often throughout the narrative. The fact that Saeyoung is able to accomplish so much is something that Yoosung finds enviable, and the same goes for the resources that Jumin and Jaehee have at their disposal. While those things might not be quite the same as cunning, I think that their resourcefulness, and the abilities they showcase in order to achieve their goals, counts as admiration for this quality from Yoosung’s side. Additionally, I would argue that Yoosung does like seeing clever tricks and pranks . . . just not when they’re being played on him. But that is, perhaps, a separate issue.

A desire to look out for / loyalty to one’s own, prioritizing them above all others ---

Arguably the most important Slytherin quality, and one that Yoosung definitely embodies and values.

One of Yoosung’s most talked about character traits is his utter devotion to Rika. At best, this makes him prone to praising her even when she wasn’t originally part of the conversation. At worst, this makes him unstable to the point where he can’t differentiate MC from Rika, or shows irritation or even hostility when he is forced to notice their differences (in the moments before they both die thanks to the apartment bomb). The thing is, while Yoosung definitely does take his devotion to Rika to unhealthy extremes in certain Bad Endings, the devotion that he does have to her fits right along with a Slytherin’s loyalty to their own. In Yoosung’s mind, Rika was one of his own, thus his insistence that he should get to know everything about her, since he’s her surviving family. To him, that bond they share as family supercedes all else, including the feelings and potential well-being of others. And that? That is very Slytherin.

See, here’s the thing: Most people think of Hufflepuff as the loyal House. While loyalty is one of Hufflepuff’s qualities, the loyalty that Hufflepuffs have is different from the loyalty that Slytherins have. Hufflepuff loyalty is loyalty to a community or group; Hufflepuffs see the world as a sort of “here are all the people worth saving / being loyalty to, and then there’s everyone else that we don’t give a damn about.” For Hufflepuffs, they don’t necessarily have to like you, but they’re still going to be loyal to you. Hufflepuff loyalty is best examined as loyalty to one’s community, or one’s church group, or one’s baseball team, whatever. Hufflepuff loyalty is loyalty to the collective.

Slytherin loyalty isn’t like that. Slytherin loyalty, like everything else Slytherins do, is rather personal and selective. If a Slytherin has decided that you’re one of their own, then that’s because they feel that you, personally, deserve that. And they’re going to be completely devoted to you, they’re going to stand by you practically no matter what. Slytherins are here to support and promote their people, in addition to themselves (and in the case of rare Slytherins, only themselves, but that’s not relevant to Yoosung). A Slytherin isn’t really going to give a damn about everyone else in the community; they’re going to care about their own people most of all. So for example, while the Hufflepuffs in the seventh Harry Potter book volunteered to stay behind and fight at the Battle of Hogwarts because they wanted to protect those in their community (i.e. those who weren’t Death Eaters), the Slytherins (such as the Malfoys) were mostly concerned with protecting those they most cared about. A Hufflepuff will see the world ending and will want to protect their towns / cities/ country / whatever; a Slytherin will see the world ending and will want to grab the hands of those they love the most and pull them to safety.

And that’s Yoosung, particularly with Rika. 

Yoosung makes it clear, especially in Another Story, that Rika is his top priority. There are at least two separate instances in Another Story where you, as the MC, can express a desire to support Saeyoung and V, and Yoosung dismisses you with, “You can support whoever you want, but I’m standing by Rika.” In saying this, Yoosung is making it very plain that he does not give a damn about Saeyoung and V, that he will drop them both in a hot second if that’s what it takes to support Rika. With V, this is not surprising; Yoosung pretty much despises V, and makes no effort to conceal that. But Saeyoung is supposed to be his friend, someone he cares an awful lot about. And I think he does care, to an extent . . . but if his choice is Saeyoung or Rika, it’s no quesiton. He will stay loyal to Rika. He will drop Saeyoung in a heartbeat if Saeyoung decides to support V instead, and he stays in this mindset for pretty much the entirety of Another Story. He bends over backwards to make excuses and justifications for Rika, he refuses to believe what anyone says, he insists that everyone---from V, to Saeyoung, to MC---must be lying to him about what Rika has done. His loyalty to Rika is so strong that even when she herself confirms what she has done, he still has a hard time believing it, because he wants to stand by her that badly. And even setting aside those drastic times, one of the easiest ways to get broken hearts for Yoosung is to insult or disparage Rika in some way. You can get one early in the Christmas DLC by insinuating you don’t like her. Yoosung’s loyalty to Rika is so strong that he can’t bear to hear a single word spoken against her. He won’t stand for it. Rika is at the center of Yoosung’s inner circle. He won’t abandon her for anything.

And again, this sort of mentality is something that Yoosung values in others. When Saeyoung says that he’s going to cut off contact with the RFA in his own route, Yoosung flips out, because the idea that someone could turn their back on those they had previously cared about is unheard of for him. (Of course, considering Yoosung is willing to drop Saeyoung for Rika’s sake makes him seem like something of a hypocrite, but still.) Fidelity is of course important in monogamous relationships, but Yoosung goes on and on about it to a level that’s a bit much at times, because he wants to make sure that the person he decides to spend his life with is just as devoted to their own people as he is. Devotion and personal loyalty are concepts that are immensely important to him. It’s one of his most dearly held values. And that, my friend, is very Slytherin.

So in conclusion, I just think Slytherin House works very well for Yoosung. He might seem a bit unconventional due to how bright and energetic he is, but I reject the stereotype that Slytherins are all moody, broody antiheroes. I think Yoosung fits the colors green and silver quite well, and I bet the Sorting Hat would agree with me. 

#xxxbladeangelxxx