tl;cr meme

[marriagebroker]

post your character, people reply, give them the deets. you know how this goes.

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[poans]

I will always lend both ears for Miru to yap.

tiredly honks my clown nose .............. 1/2

[phenomerom]

It's time. Cocks my clown cannon and aims it in sweet Yi Sang's direction --

I gotta be honest. I usually start these word dumps with the warning that I'm about go into Rom's stupid 4D chess mental gymnastics, but that actually isn't the case when it comes to Yi Sang. This is mostly thanks to the fact that Rom's much bigger concern regarding Yi Sang was a very simple 'oh, I have no clue what to do with this guy.'

Setting aside the nuances of his mindset when it came the role he thought he was meant to play and what influence that might have on his perfect match, Rom ultimately accepted his invitation to AYTO under the assumption that he would be spending four weeks working -- he would not be 'earnestly looking for romance,' but rather, 'performing as an entertainer for the cameras, which would include puzzling out his game-assigned perfect match under the pretense that he was seeking romance.' And while this definitely affected his approach when it came to trying to figure out who the hell the production had assigned to him as his perfect match, it also meant that, on a base level, he was constantly very aware of how his interactions would look to the show's audience. This came with both upsides and downsides. Pros: he was always very alert to the chances of running PR for his own personal channel and brand, which he considered a huge perk of taking on the job! Con: man, it stressed him out whenever he ran into a situation where he wasn't sure how he was supposed to liven things up for the audience .... which ended up being most of this early experiences with Yi Sang.

Mind you, it's not that Rom necessarily blamed Yi Sang for any of this. I think Rom's immediate first impression when it came to Yi Sang was that he was very ... honest. For better and for worse. When it came to their early encounters, like during spin the bottle and even up to their disastrous ice cream parlor date, Rom was mostly aware of how honest Yi Sang seemed, even if it was to his (Yi Sang's own) detriment. There was no sense of falsehood or showmanship when it came to Yi Sang's dead-eyed, deadpan and almost soulless demeanor; Rom's reading was that it was entirely genuine, cameras be damned. And while as a certified oddball himself, he wasn't going to judge Yi Sang for it, it sure did throw him for a loop in that he had no idea how to play off that sort of empty husk demeanor in order to make for good television. I should clarify here -- Rom isn't inflexible when it comes to how he bounces off most people! He is up for both bullying (Edamura) and being bullied (Poppy), being lowkey (Shoko) and being more bombastic (Messmer), as well as everything in between; he's made his living off of being marketable (in his specific niche) for a good few years by now, and he's pretty good at figuring out how to spin most scenarios in a way that retains views. -- Yi Sang, though? It was a bit like squeezing water out of a stone. Attempts at being courteous (spin the bottle) and being blunt (the latter portion of their ice cream parlor date) seemed equally fruitless, no matter how much he tried to fish for some sort of genuine reaction out of Yi Sang. (Note: this was the main reason he bothered ordering all that ice cream, to try and stir some sort of reaction out of Yi Sang.) So even setting aside all personal feelings, I think Rom mostly just felt low-key stressed when it came to having to spend too much time around Yi Sang during those first two weeks and change.

Although ... there was also a personal element here. Because I think I mentioned it somewhere (the CR chart maybe?) before, but Yi Sang actually reminded Rom a lot of back when he was much younger. We don't get to see a ton of Rom back in his childhood, but what we do see is pretty consistent: he was a quiet child with dead eyes, a gloomy disposition and a somewhat stilted way of talking. He's later described as having been quite shy -- an excellent student, and seemingly very astute, but also very introverted and strongly averse to making eye contact. It all sounds a little familiar, no?

This isn't to say that Rom thought of Yi Sang and himself as true equals in any way; he would have considered that an insulting statement, and he never got the impression that Yi Sang held the same potential for duplicity or deceit that he does. But he did end up wondering if maybe Yi Sang was in a similar place mentally that he'd been back in his childhood -- adrift, lost, and in need of someone kind to offer a helping hand. Though he wouldn't have necessarily characterized himself as 'in pain' back in those younger days, Rom does know that it was warmth and kindness that ultimately helped him find his equilibrium as he was growing up; he desperately needed the stabilizing presence of someone like his mentor who was willing to support him. And Rom's never been able to forget the kind helping hand that Towako -- his Master's mentor, the woman who rescued him from his abandonment -- offered him when he was at his lowest. For as much as Rom wants to help people in need, I think he's also sharply aware of his strengths and his weaknesses, his capabilities and his limitations; his area of expertise is handling ghosts, and when it comes to offering people genuine warmth and kindness, he knows there are others who are far more suited to filling that role. Thus, Rom backed off a half-step to keep a little distance between them -- both for his own sake, since he was stressed enough trying to figuring out his match, but also for Yi Sang's, because he didn't want to eat up any precious time that Yi Sang might better spend in the company of their warmer, more genuine castmates.

This was partly why Rom was quietly rooting for Yingying and Yi Sang to work out -- if not as game-assigned perfect matches, then at least a genuine connection outside of the game's system. Yes, Yingying generally unnerved him (see above tl;cr re: Yingying), and yes, he had no idea what to do with Yi Sang when it came to screentime, but YiYi's interactions in general and on stage (during the second match ceremony) seemed genuine and warm -- maybe this could be good for the both of them? But also, just on a more human and personal level, Rom would have liked for Yi Sang to find the same sort of warmth that he'd been blessed with in his own youth. To be lonely and adrift is a terrible feeling, and he would have liked for Yi Sang to find reprieve, if that really was the cause of his odd demeanor.

[phenomerom]

A small wrench was thrown into this mindset of his only after the second match ceremony when Rom felt like his top match candidates according to his cynical calculus (Messmer, Odile) had both been eliminated, while he'd also been given no indication that he should change his approach towards the game. Which meant that, by Ringo's calculations, his most likely remaining match candidates would be Edamura, Luka and Yi Sang. Rom, struggling with the terrifying prospect of having to deal with Actual Emotions, had promptly crossed out the potential of himself being matched with Edamura, considering it too convenient and good to be true (and would only circle back to it when cornered by The Math). Luka actually served as a decent candidate for him according to his cynical calculus, because Rom figured they're both performers, while Luka's dazzling appearances would contrast "nicely" against his own image in a sort of 'beauty and the beast' appeal that might play well to television audiences. But Rom also knew that he held no fundamental commonalities with Luka, despite 'commonalities' seeming to be key, according to the perfect match between Ringo and Furina (and later, Verso and Nico). Which meant ... he felt like he had to give some serious thought to the possibility of a match with Yi Sang and, if that was the case, how the hell he was going to bring the matter up and sell it to the cameras.

Fortunately for Rom (and honestly, probably Yi Sang as well), week three ended up being extremely fruitful in terms of Rom deepening his genuine connection with Edamura and accepting that maybe, maybe he was allowed to try and take the gamble with Edamura as his game-assigned 'perfect match.' So he didn't end up trying to hunt Yi Sang down and manipulate some sort of scenario to better facilitate them going up on stage as a potential perfect match! But regardless, the notion did weigh on Rom's mind for a hot second, and then lingered afterwards because he felt a little bad about it. While Rom would have considered it a pretty obvious conclusion (from the viewpoint of the show's production and the audience) that himself and Yi Sang were equally strange outliers in the show's cast, and thus potentially suitable as perfect matches just for the purposes of the show, he did always read Yi Sang as someone fundamentally more sincere than himself, so -- he would have felt a little bad about having considered Yi Sang his 'equal' in any way, even briefly.

Either way, entering week four of the game, Rom was a lot more at peace with many things -- with what was expected of him, what his place in the game was, and how he was maybe allowed to feel about his 'perfect match' -- and so I think he was able to drop his guard a little bit and address everything around him in a slightly more sincere manner. It was in this context that the final lore drop occurred, which I think ended up changing Rom's perception of Yi Sang a fair bit.

On a most basic level ... I think that lore drop conversation ended up being a wake-up call to Rom about just how genuinely kind and sincere a person Yi Sang was. He'd already gotten an inkling through observing Yi Sang's general demeanor and interactions with other people, yes, but it was notable to him that Yi Sang would express such a remarkably, almost ludicrously kind sentiment to him -- that he would have been capable of accepting 'a creature' like him in his childhood and showing that child warmth enough to save them. Rom, I think, is far past holding grudges and resentment over what happened to him in his childhood, but that doesn't mean he's necessarily happy with what happened; a small part of him does think it would have been nice, if someone could have shown him that sort of acceptance when he was very young. Though he wouldn't necessarily characterize himself as having 'been in pain,' he does know on a factual level that he was deprived of unconditional love ... speaking objectively, it would have been nice if he could have experienced that, you know? And even setting his own selfish thoughts of what could have been nicer for himself, he does genuinely respect Yi Sang's idealism -- the purity of his intentions.

Sorry, this is a slight tangent where I have to fistfight with Rom's mental gymnastics demons in front of your salad, but I do think it ties into why Rom would hold a special admiration for Yi Sang's idealism, so please bear with me for a hot second. I've been thinking about it ever since you did your thread commentary and I will explode if I can't barf the words out somewhere or the other.

Rom wasn't being particularly self-deprecating or humble when he told Yi Sang that he isn't compassionate -- I think that would be his honest, 100% genuine assessment of himself, given how he views himself and the world around him. (OOCly, I think he is deeply compassionate. Rom is a bleeding-heart softie who will tank any risk himself if it would mean helping someone who needs it, especially someone whose pleas have gone unheard. But that is that, and this is this.) It's not that Rom lacks in self-esteem, per se; I think there are plenty of positive adjectives that he'd apply to himself with zero hesitation (and also zero sarcasm or facetiousness). But he is also just so aware of how othered he is that I think it's something he can never keep out of his calculus. He was very young (probably like six-ish?) when he was taken in after being abandoned, and I think if he was already able to communicate that he 'understood he was different' at that age, then that was something very deeply seeded into his core self-identity, and nothing in his life afterward would have dispelled that notion. As such, I think Rom has a very sharp understanding of how this affects his relation to normal human beings -- in terms of upsides, it gives him leeway and soft permission to take actions that are considered socially unacceptable, because he is performing a public service that normal people are incapable of (thus freeing him from any guilt about soft-scamming people for a living), but on the flipside, it means he will always be distanced from normal human beings. He is human, so he can mentally emulate and hypothesize what they might be thinking and how they might feel, but there is ultimately a hard cap on how deeply he can sympathize with these people that he is othered from.

As such, I think Rom would say that he is nice, but not that he's kind. That he is well-meaning and dutiful, but not that he is altruistic. And I don't know what he'd say instead, but I don't think he'd ever call himself 'compassionate,' because I think that word carries the weight of too much sympathy and sincerity -- Rom is too aware of how calculated and distanced his own mindset is to be able to apply that word to himself. Not to mention, Rom knows what compassion is -- compassion is what Towako showed him when he was young. That completely selfless and genuine desire to help, something which he truly idolizes and admires even now, decades later. It's something he tries to live up to and pay respect to with all his heart, but I think it's a goalpost that he's never felt like he's truly reached, especially given his own 'compassion' is what got Towako killed when he was young, and the guilt of that mistake will always weigh on him. Compassion embodies something that I think he considers fundamentally opposed to his own mindset: purity of intent.

And so we circle back to Yi Sang. What Yi Sang said during their conversation was ridiculously, almost stupidly idealistic ... but I think in a way, Rom likes that more than the sort of platitudes or niceties that most people could have offered him during the same conversation. Words might be cheap, but it's impossible for him to imagine Yi Sang saying something so idealistic as a lie or a farce, given the sort of person Yi Sang had proven himself to be over the weeks. And Yi Sang would have nothing to gain from saying so idealistic about a long-gone hypothetical situation, but he said it anyway. I think Rom would really respect that purity of intent, even if it can't actually do anything for him for him. He'd really like the thought that people like Yi Sang are out there, and might be able to help other people in ways that he can't; he was completely serious in saying that he hopes Yi Sang is able to stay that idealistic going forth, because that sort of idealism isn't always what's necessary, but it's the sort of thing some people might find most helpful ... like himself, when he was young, and how he was saved by Towako's compassion in those dark times.

Anyway!

As they depart from the game, Rom truly wishes Yi Sang nothing but the best! He's very glad to have seen Yi Sang evolve from the sad, non-responsive Yiyore of week one into the sweet weirdo who'll say 'rizz' out loud, who almost certainly has Yingying and Odile's backs, and who just generally has more light in his eyes. Rom's under no illusions that they have any particularly close relationship, but he does harbor a quiet fondness for the guy, and feels really gratified when he thinks about how things have turned out for Yi Sang in the end. And while his general nature -- bad at keeping in touch with people for personal purposes, always kind of evasive and opaque -- means Rom won't exactly be blowing up Yi Sang's phone with well-wishes, I do think he'll show up in Yi Sang's texts sporadically, with no warning, going forth. Ostensibly to pester him for a stream appearance, but also partly just to see how the guy's doing. He wants to know Yi Sang's managing to stay his weird, sweet, idealistic self, you know?