tl;cr meme

[marriagebroker]

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

Comments

[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?