tl;cr meme

[marriagebroker]

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

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[poans]

Somebody save them.

The eye contact was intense in their first encounter! Yi Sang, who's remarked in canon to have spent his early years staring at the ground when interacting with others, avoided Poppy's gaze like his life depended on it. His avoidance stemmed from the opposite face of his desire for metaphorical warmth in the company of others, which was the fear of being burned by their eyes, which he considered to be glistening and scalding things. His concession with himself was to "seep" in their company instead, enjoying their companionship without meeting them head-on, and that was, for the most part, how he approached Poppy until the final week of the game.

I put down so many titles in his profile, because they told his story in a way that would introduce tidbits he otherwise wouldn't have shared. They were also arranged in order of chronology and then relevance. He'd been an architect first, during his tenure of which he'd engineered as a hobby on the side, and research had been a part of that package until it had become his occupation by something akin to force. As much as he loves research, he'd let the surviving piece of technology that had tethered him to his happiest memories go in order to walk free and eventually join the game. He'd always been and still remained a philosopher, whereas he'd been a medic as necessary, coming from a district of intense political and economic turmoil.

He didn't do a good job of explaining any of this. At this time, Yi Sang was grappling with the inherent despair and isolation of his situation against the faintest hope for change that had driven him to strike out alone. He is, actually, rather talkative by nature once he gets going, but in his emotional numbness and mental exhaustion couldn't be bothered to expound on the very basics, so he gave Poppy the barest minimum. His answer to her question about how he'd gotten fired from research was an earnest attempt at keeping her from knowing too much, though: The thing he'd been handling—the mirror of his making that allows the holder to peer into and interact with alternate realities—wasn't dangerous so much as the people involved in the project. He'd been asked not to discuss the details, and the City is bankrupt enough of morality that he refused to tell Poppy anything for fear of jeopardizing her safety. He had, however, really taken the walk he told her about after he could no longer cope with that taxidermied way of life, rotting away in a white square by the people keeping him drugged almost senseless every day.

That was behind him, so he moved on to a more relevant subject—Poppy herself. He raised the fact that she, too, was an engineer, which was a piece of trivia that made her stand out upon his perusal of the profiles. He either thought of or brought her name up at least twice across other threads when discussing with fellow players if anybody interested him. It was the slightest stimulation of curiosity, sparked by mutual appreciation of creation, that was like a flicker of life. Despite the state of him, he did listen intently to what Poppy had to say about her projects.

In fact, he was somewhat baffled to hear about her partner. (And he was deeply grateful that she moved on from talking about her sex life as soon as it had come out. No, thank you.) While Yi Sang has zero interest in business and the networking aspect of engineering, he's very into technology to where he could understand that she was doing what she needed in order to realize her dream. When the League of Nine, the inventors' organization of which he'd been a member, had been struggling to make ends meet for the lease, he'd immediately offered all of his earnings to maintain their place. He'd never enjoyed his vocation as an architect due to the exploitative consequences of his coveted blueprints, but he'd known the necessity of having a stable job if he wished to continue doing what brought him happiness, so he never judged Poppy for her reasons. He couldn't and wouldn't.

In a way, it was envious just how much of an ideal participant she was. Her ambitions had brought her to the estate, but she also didn't mind the prospect of meeting someone and was even considering uses for the wish. Yi Sang had dismissed the wish almost as soon as he'd come up with one, deeming the return of his lost wings nothing more than a futile dream. He wasn't here for romance, but for the idea of something destined, of something that might give him a reason to continue living after walking barefoot in the rain for so long as to be in excruciating pain. He, by all rights, shouldn't have been in the game despite being a willing player. And here was Poppy, alive and vivacious and ambitious.

His reason wasn't normal, and he took it in stride by cracking a tried joke about his name. But his roundabout answer to her question of change was a resounding yes. He didn't want to be like this. He wanted to feel again, to find color and light in the world around him, to escape the darkness of isolation. If not for that, he wouldn't have hidden the pills and walked out at the first chance he had. It was all too much to put into words, and Poppy didn't probe, which he appreciated. As vocal as she was about her opinions, it was clear to him that she also listened.

During the truth booth discussion, he spoke up for Poppy once asked what he thought of himself and her as a potentially sensational match due to his poverty and her desire for money. Although he didn't say so, he thought this was an unjust assessment of her, so he leaned in on the observations he'd made during their talk by stating that she appeared in want of acceptance and support more than anything else. The reasons he didn't comment on their potential match was because he wasn't confident in anything due to the mysterious nature of the algorithm, and also because he didn't think he had the capacity to support her in the way she needed. It was already taking great effort on his end to wake up and move around every day, even if he was warming up to the presence of friendly company over the days. And so, when it seemed that Poppy was getting what she craved from Shoko at the ceremony, the impression quietly stuck and Yi Sang, over the weeks, would increasingly come to like them as a pair, matches notwithstanding.

Truly, nobody was stronger than Poppy on the early night of the second week . . . I'm pretty sure that Yi Sang has always been the way he is now, in the sense that expressing his numerous thoughts had always been a struggle to where he wouldn't say much out of frustration and weariness. Poppy asked if he had friends growing up, and he had two! They'd been very close, and it had been asked once in his recent past if his reluctance to start something new was because of their absences. In fact, part of Yi Sang's growth toward grasping his happiness again in the game would be owed to Yingying's dream, where he'd reminisce the days when he and his friends would laugh and play together in their hometown. The League had been the place where he could be free from the City's cruelties and do as he'd pleased without hurting anyone, but people were the sources of joy—they were home. Ergo, the delicate point that burrows into his chest was because he didn't know whether either of his friends was still alive, but even the twisting didn't hurt much due to the emotional void in him. It was difficult for him to hang onto even pain when he was so tired. Disillusioned as he'd become at the end of the first week, at this point he was quietly wishing for death so that he could escape his agonizing thoughts.

While he kept the details to the usual minimum, there was a noticeable shift in Poppy's attitude. She indulged in his food when nobody else had, and even seemed eager to contribute to it with her own flavor. As a side note, while Yi Sang liked the meal just fine, even he was a bit aghast at the idea of throwing in brown sugar at this stage. Poor preparation was one thing, but this was a completely different ingredient that didn't replace anything missing. There will be a time in canon when he substitutes sugar with butter, and the result will be atrocious; having said that, there would at least be an odd logic to follow.

His infamous comment on the intensely mild flavor traced back to his love of all things intense. Sometimes, the intensity in one direction would swerve right back to the opposite end of the spectrum. In this case, the sheer overpowering flavor of the sauce obliterated the rest of the dish, and the end result was something milder in his mind. As for Poppy, her table manners were atrocious, but he simply let her be as he couldn't be bothered to make a fuss about it and, more importantly, understood that she was going out of her way to be nice. While it wasn't necessary, it was kind.

And then . . . the robot fighting competition. Yi Sang dislikes violence in all its forms! Poppy, however, was very into the match, yet what stuck out amid her morbid imagination was the place of passion from where she was speaking. She was applying the topic to her work with code; as someone who'd once been so enthralled by his projects as to devote every spare moment to them, it wasn't a terrible observation. He also agreed with her morality concerning the ethics of enabling sentient machinery to feel pain for entertainment, utterly wild as the mere notion of it was, because artificial intelligence is forbidden in the City—as in, those who violate that taboo are erased gruesomely from the face of the earth in mere moments. Speaking of, she indicated that some people could be so morally bereft, and the realism of that belief was respectable in a way.

The third week only became stranger from there, topped by her introduction of what yaoi, yuri, and het mean. He could make an educated guess on what het was, but the other two were foreign, so he asked for her guidance in order to enlighten himself on the discussion in case it would help. As for whether or not it did . . . Poppy, though indeed a woman of many talents, completely lost him with her gestures. He couldn't understand. He was under the impression that her explanation hadn't covered everything, but he understood enough of the sentiment that, from a certain angle, it could have been considered a success.

As a whole, Poppy tended to speak whatever was on her mind. Sometimes the words were confounding, if not outright abrasive; for the most part, though, they had a certain charm. She'd mouth off and get into her share of altercations, yet it was also clear to him that she had many a thought that would surface kindly, like when she picked Yingying at the third ceremony with the promise of ensuring the latter wouldn't be alone. Poppy was a friend to those in need of one—full of life, pain, joy, and ambition. She was like the bonfire he would equate her to during hot or not at the final party, an ardent spring of warmth that could burn if it so desired.

By their date on the fourth week, Yi Sang was much more active and responsive as the result of letting certain thoughts go and accepting others, so he chose to indulge Poppy at the themed park in order to ensure that she had a good time. Remembering her fondness for sweets, he decided on the funnel cake stand first, and there was the underlying sweetness again when she spoke of sharing like it was as natural as breathing to her—except her order was monstrously sweet, even by his standards! Yi Sang likes intense foods on the savory and spicy side. This was neither. Having said that, it was a different experience he was willing to try at least once with Poppy at his side, and he took advantage of their time together to learn more about her. Curiously, there was an immediate shift when he asked after her mother, and though he was initially confused by her response, he soon realized that there might be a complicated history between them.

Getting into the familiar topic of forgoing bodily needs to indulge one's hyperfixation, he didn't exactly think her idea of keeping candy by the computer was optimal for energy needs, but at least she'd done something. This segued into his asking about her reasons for joining the game, and, to his surprise, she'd forgotten about them. She quickly recouped by stating that she could manage on her own, and he actually agreed with this. Poppy had the drive. This was also a sign that she'd been thriving in other aspects of the game, perhaps in the ways she'd needed the most, to even consider the impersonal side of things. It was an unexpectedly warm development, which he also questioned Shoko on during their date, as he really thought the two of them were lovely for each other. All in all, Yi Sang had a fair amount of respect for Poppy as an engineer and a friend (even if not necessarily to him), no matter how ill-advised some of the words she'd utter. He hopes her future projects with her partner are a smashing success, and that she and Shoko find peace in each other's company.