#it's funny after i wrote the matonato part i was like wait. am i actually saying matonato DOESN'T make sense to me?

[coquelicoq]

hmmm for the shipping meme! matonato and hankim or yoohankim?

[ID: A graph with the x-axis labeled "makes sense" on the left and "doesn't make sense" on the right and the y-axis labeled "compels me" at the top and "doesn't compel me" at the bottom. points labeled MN for matonato, HK for hankim, and YHK for yoohankim have been situated on the grid: MN in the top left (makes sense, compels me), HK at the top and to the right of MN (makes some sense, compels me), and two points labeled YHK, one slightly above and to the left of the center (makes some sense, compels me some) and one in the bottom right (doesn't make sense, doesn't compel me). /end ID]

wow this threw me off because for some reason i assumed that makes sense would be on the right instead of the left! so hopefully i made all the necessary corrections to what i originally wrote lol.

matonato: makes sense, compels me. probably obnoxiously obvious to everyone at this point. do they get a happy ending? i mean it's very fun to think about and i love me a good actually-together-matonato concept, but probably the most compelling thing about them is the star-crossed aspect. it's not will they won't they, it's why they why not they. why do they want this and why can they never have it? it's, how can i make this about natori's self-hatred? it's, who is matoba if he quits the exorcist business? (EXTREMELY JUICY AND COMPELLING QUESTION 2 B ASKING.) it's, what changes in their individual priorities and self-conception would be necessary before they could get together? asking myself these questions and understanding why they in their current forms can't be in a relationship helps me to better articulate who exactly they are and what motivates them and gives me avenues for thinking about possible character development. but like i said i do really love thinking about matonato endgame, and even though i know it's never going to be canon (which it doesn't need to be, obviously! we are in our sandbox making our own dreams come true), i'm reading the homura arc like girl why did you do that. where are you going with this??? fellas is it gay to stalk your homoerotic rival's enemies and the answer is a resounding YES. they are a good ship because thinking about each of them in the context of the other expands my understanding and appreciation of their individual characters, but also because it would be sexy for them to mash their mouths together. both are very important elements of shipping 2 me.

hankim: i want to say this is one of the most compelling relationships in orv but they are all compelling, it's actually insane. however hankim is definitely tied for first (with twenty other relationships). her love for him is the beating heart of the story. like the entire plot hinges around her loving him so much she would [redacted], but also the central themes are exemplified by how she feels about him and what she does about it. and he trusts her in a way he can't really trust anyone else, because she knows enough about the world that he can be open with her about things he can't tell others, and because he trusts her to be competent and able to achieve his objectives. mostly to me though their relationship Is About her love for him because of how badly he needs it and how little he can understand it, and how central it is to his entire character that he needs but cannot understand receiving that kind of love. i have not yet succeeded in imagining any kind of compelling sexual relationship for them, except the somewhat indirect one where he gives her permission to make a kim-dokja-looking avatar with which to fuck yoo joonghyuk while kim dokja is elsewhere minding his own business, but that's fine, they don't need to be having sex to have a compelling relationship, obviously. so yeah it's compelling af and it does make sense, but i'm taking some sense points off because the kdj-to-hsy direction is pretty standard shipping material while the opposite direction is like the entire point of the book. it's a lil unbalanced.

yoohankim: this ship fascinates me because i definitely never would have come up with it myself. hankim? see above. yookim? see below. but yoohan - DESPITE THE WHOLE DEAL AROUND WHO YOO JOONGHYUK IS AND HOW HE GOT THAT WAY - are just like. Only Here For Kim Dokja. any relationship they have with each other is a proxy for a relationship with kim dokja, mediated by their feelings for kim dokja, and put through the sieve of who the other person is to kim dokja. i think they have a very psychosexual thing going on where they're having a lot of sex with each other but mostly in order to feel close to kim dokja, who is not involved lol. which is its own kind of compelling, certainly. i guess you could say yoohankim is the ONLY way that yoohan makes any sort of sense to me whatsoever, so in that regard yoohankim is squarely in the northwest quadrant. but at the same time i feel like if kim dokja is actually present, their relationship with each other is more like in-laws than anything else. it's indirect. they don't have divorced energy…they don't even have metamour energy. i don't know. they're like this is my sister's mailman and i have no idea what he's doing at my nephew's piano recital, which is insane to me because they should have (nonsexual) parent-child energy if nothing else. so i also have to put yoohankim in the southeast quadrant. so far this is where most yoohankim fic i have read falls, but probably i just haven't yet found the one that would unlock it for me.

to close the loop i gotta talk about yookim (joongdok). the most enjoyable thing about it to me personally is that yoo joonghyuk so clearly wants kim dokja to hold him down and it's very fun to see kim dokja have to shift his entire paradigm to make that make sense. i mean, i think all of kimcom wants to hold kim dokja down (most of them nonsexually imo), but yoo joonghyuk is the one guy who's like "if you would just stop trying to kill yourself for two seconds then i could let you out of these handcuffs so you could have your way with me. you bastard." they make me crazy because they work together SO well and trust each other SO implicitly while also being like, wow this idiot has terrible priorities and so i have to manipulate him into furthering my agenda (keeping him safe) instead of his agenda (keeping me safe). they're also that evergreen combo of guy with low self-worth who's oblivious to other people's love for him/guy who loves so hard but never uses his words about it that makes me wanna read about them getting together 100 different times. in a slightly different sense than with matonato, thinking about them as a twosome better elucidates aspects of their own individual personalities and worldviews, which makes for a compelling shipping experience.